Which hermeneutical method is the most appropriate way to evaluate a piece of art?

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Re: Which hermeneutical method is the most appropriate way to evaluate a piece of art?

Post by Angel Trismegistus »

Pandora wrote: August 13th, 2020, 1:31 pm
Angel Trismegistus wrote: August 13th, 2020, 4:55 am To my mind the most sensible method is to read, view, listen, watch for meaning first of all, and ask questions later.
Yeah, this is the level of practice
Too succinct? Or not prolix enough?
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Re: Which hermeneutical method is the most appropriate way to evaluate a piece of art?

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Pandora wrote: August 13th, 2020, 1:26 pm
Sculptor1 wrote: August 12th, 2020, 6:17 pm But I did not ask what is art - I asked what are your criteria for evaluation?
Cost of the piece?
Skill of the artist?
How it moves you?
Why it moves you?
How it disgusts you?
It's beauty?
I proposed to use the conception of Rorty. According to historical reconstruction, art would be evaluated either as a thing that coordinates with historical context of its author or as a thing that doesn't coordinate.
Why would this be useful or meaningful? And who is to say what is an historical context? All seems a bit arbitrary to me. So art is great because it challenges the present by echoing the past, or pushes us forward into the future. Some art is great because it is timeless.
What is he getting at? Why does he think that is relevant or important?
According to rational reconstruction, it is possible to evaluate an art piece either as a thing that satisfies sense contexts of a given historical period (historical context of creation is ignored) or a thing that fails to satisfy this criterion.
If this is all you want, then all you would need it to caricature an "historical context" WTFTI. Then try to indentify elements in the art that match your caricature!! LOL Good luck with that.
I see that it is a bit confusing. Abovemention approaches are concerned with functional dimensions of art demonstrated in descriptive manner, so my notion of evaluation involves interpersonal factor - in other words, not what art is (as you asked) in its essence, but what is considered to be an art
LOL
I think you are confused.
Without elements of the "art demonstrated in descriptive manner" how are you going to compare the art for historical context. But that would be the easy part.
Show me what you think an historical context would look like.
If this is an "evaluation" exercise; does the art get points for adhering to the context?
What is Rorty seeking to demonstrate here?
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Re: Which hermeneutical method is the most appropriate way to evaluate a piece of art?

Post by Jklint »

The question is in a way inappropriate. To evaluate it hermeneutically means to conceptualize it's meaning by way of words which may then be expounded and argued philosophically or psychologically based on whatever sense or feeling it invokes in its analyzer. In short, a free-for-all by which evaluation is simply denoted in the way its described amounting to nothing more than a set of various impressions and speculations...the usual philosophical format for never deciding anything. Das ding an sich in art remains untouched and therefore timeless. All art which survives beyond its age remains forever contemporary.
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Re: Which hermeneutical method is the most appropriate way to evaluate a piece of art?

Post by Pandora »

Count Lucanor wrote: August 13th, 2020, 6:52 pm
Pandora wrote: August 13th, 2020, 1:29 pm I agree with you. Only through combining the art-in-itself and art within the network of cultural codes it is possible to obtain more compete analysis of art products. Sontag's thesis is interesting. Erotics of art instead of hermeneutics somehow sounds similar to overcoming of ethics in virtue of aesthetics as Nietzsche practised in his works. But why do you think that aesthetic analysis is more about form than context?
I actually said more about form than content, not context. Disregarding the typo, I assume you got the message. Aesthetics must be about form, after all it is what is specific about art, along with medium and technique, intrinsically linked to form. Content, on the other hand, carries semantic meaning, which is not specific of any art. You can convey the same message without relying on any artistic means. Also, as time passes, meanings in art works fade away with the social conditions that created them, while their forms still serve as an ideal of composition and actually create the possibilities of new meanings for a new public in future societies. We can still appreciate Greek art, either for artistic or non-artistic purposes, even though we don't exactly share the meanings and functions associated with it in ancient times.

I don't want to underestimate content, however, as it does retain some relation with form. A newspaper article is also composed, it has a form, conceived as a function of the message, but it is not art. You must compose with some aesthetic sense a commercial advertising clip or a business presentation. They are not art either. That's because in those cases the form serves the content to express an univocal message or straightforward effect, and its purpose is exhausted once the audience has apprehended its literal, direct meaning or effect. In art, at least in real art, whatever message is conveyed through a formal project, it's not direct, univocal, but ambiguous, suggesting some interpretations, but not giving them right away. The artist has introduced innovations, has proposed a formal code that departs from the known codes that allowed straightforward interpretations. And the audience is forced to decode its somehow hidden message through the medium and technique of the artist.
Pardon. I really meant content, not context. As far as I understood, you think that newspapers and advertisements cannot be considered as a piece of art, because the form of their messages serves the content which indirectly means that the form and content in not-art appear to be, I should say, the same in the sense that distinction is absent. Audience which receives various complexes of codes from a not-art message perceives it literally: in art aesthetical code never becomes completely full and exhausted, so, as the result, observer gains an opportunity to come across with something that escapes from once and for all arranged meanings. In other words, art is art inasmuch as its meaning oscillates remaining opened to interpretations no matter of what kind – be it social conditions, intentions of the author or just way of thinking interpretator provides without referring to both social conditions and author’s intentions. Once a philosopher Abraham Moles made an attempt to distinguish aesthetical code from informational (I don’t remember for sure, to be honest): he suggested that informational code is linked to the elements it contains and, because of that, meaning could be only literal, while aesthetical code remains ambiguous and somehow oriented on the context of speaking. It seems to me that form being distanciated from the content is specific about art in such a way that nothing serves nothing: I mean the principle ‘form serves the content’ as it comes into existence in not-art (newspapers, advertisements) couldn’t be applied to art pieces as well as the opposite of this principle; at the same time, form and content in art are mingled to such an extreme from the perspective of which they become independent from each other. You say content carries semantic meaning which isn’t specific of any art. Let’s observe such kind of art as literature. What we have here? Verbal message which obviously bears semantic meaning. In other words, it is an art guided by content. On the other hand, the question of form (how it is written, in what genre, which of rhetorical tropes are predominant and how this fact characterizes the text) plays a very important role in literature as such. However, it is one of those cases where content is perhaps more than a half of the art piece. In contrast, painting and music mostly imply non-verbal messages, non-verbal level of perception, but are they necessarily determined by the form of expression? Maybe in aesthetical code the connection between form and content isn’t direct (while in informational codes presented by not-art content=form), so there is a place for oscillation and ambiguity. Yes, semantic meaning isn’t specific of art. So is syntactic. Maybe the products of art are performative, so they ‘work’ in the field of pragmatics?
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Re: Which hermeneutical method is the most appropriate way to evaluate a piece of art?

Post by Pandora »

Angel Trismegistus wrote: August 14th, 2020, 1:59 am
Pandora wrote: August 13th, 2020, 1:31 pm

Yeah, this is the level of practice
Too succinct? Or not prolix enough?
The primal experience of perceiving an art piece is an act of submergence into feelings and spontaneous impulses which produce non-verbal constructions of the world depicted. Every step in the direction of analysis comes afterwards. I think at the stage of practice art isn’t simply perceived for meaning if the phenomenon of meaning implies verbal articulation textually furnished. The process of creation often happens under the complete ignorance of un createur who hardly understands what is going on and what he/she is producing. I know, it is a bit exaggerating, but the point is that making an art work seems to be in most of the cases a spontaneous and unplanned act (to some extent, of course). So goes with the process of perceiving an art form. Ça me paraît that in the questions of encountering an art form in its fullness and primordial originality, reading, listening or watching (as you’ve mentioned) for art’s sake in pre-theoretical light is important for feeling primal meanings, not yet provided with artificial verbal constructions.
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Re: Which hermeneutical method is the most appropriate way to evaluate a piece of art?

Post by Pandora »

Sculptor1 wrote: August 14th, 2020, 4:37 am
Pandora wrote: August 13th, 2020, 1:26 pm

I proposed to use the conception of Rorty. According to historical reconstruction, art would be evaluated either as a thing that coordinates with historical context of its author or as a thing that doesn't coordinate.
Why would this be useful or meaningful? And who is to say what is an historical context? All seems a bit arbitrary to me. So art is great because it challenges the present by echoing the past, or pushes us forward into the future. Some art is great because it is timeless.
What is he getting at? Why does he think that is relevant or important?
According to rational reconstruction, it is possible to evaluate an art piece either as a thing that satisfies sense contexts of a given historical period (historical context of creation is ignored) or a thing that fails to satisfy this criterion.
If this is all you want, then all you would need it to caricature an "historical context" WTFTI. Then try to indentify elements in the art that match your caricature!! LOL Good luck with that.
I see that it is a bit confusing. Abovemention approaches are concerned with functional dimensions of art demonstrated in descriptive manner, so my notion of evaluation involves interpersonal factor - in other words, not what art is (as you asked) in its essence, but what is considered to be an art
LOL
I think you are confused.
Without elements of the "art demonstrated in descriptive manner" how are you going to compare the art for historical context. But that would be the easy part.
Show me what you think an historical context would look like.
If this is an "evaluation" exercise; does the art get points for adhering to the context?
What is Rorty seeking to demonstrate here?
‘Why would this be useful or meaningful?’ – Who says this should be useful and meaningful? Or you just suppose that thesis one provides is valid only when it is in concordance with your criteria of usefulness or meaningfulness? But I appreciate this strategy. Teleological, utilitarian strategy fashioned with radical subjectivism is worth living. Good luck with that!
‘What is he getting at?’ – He isn’t getting at anything at all. It is my interpretations of Rorty’s (I hope you’ve heard something about this philosopher) interpretation of historicists’ (of philosophy) attempts to analyze the philosophical texts. Rorty didn’t apply these kinds of reconstructions to art works: he was concerned with strictly textual messages. By the way, when people are looking for explanations, while observing a product of art, they refer to different sense-bearing complexes of signs: you may discover social conditions, the person of author or the source of influence to be the content of art piece, in short, you discover a sign X, Y, Z whatever as being content-form reliant, coz art is a sign system. Rorty just summarized raw ordinary experience of analyzing the texts which could be expanded on art. If you don’t like Rorty – Ok, it’s your choice.
You demand the definition of historical context and you claim it to be elusive. Ok. Historical context of an art work is a complicated network of interchangeable elements which are 1) rules and canons for making an art form which could be simply classified as a representative of this or that genre, 2) general economical/social/political/cultural determinants which could possibly leave an imprint on the content of an art form (these determinants are taken from the historical period in which author lives), 3) the quality of autheur’s using of rules and canons that puts into question how autheur’s style of art form corresponds with the other authors who works in the same genre. For example, the book ‘One hundred years of loneliness’ could be observed as an art form representing literature genre named magic realism with regard to historical context (Borges is one that writers who develops magic realism) or we withdraw factual historical determinants and choose other interpreting models. Harman’s Object Oriented Ontology or Lacanian psychoanalysis, for instance. It is very logical to make an attempt to name these two strategies, as Rorty did with regard to the philosophical texts.
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Re: Which hermeneutical method is the most appropriate way to evaluate a piece of art?

Post by Angel Trismegistus »

Pandora wrote: August 14th, 2020, 2:50 pm
Angel Trismegistus wrote: August 14th, 2020, 1:59 am
Too succinct? Or not prolix enough?
The primal experience of perceiving an art piece is an act of submergence into feelings and spontaneous impulses which produce non-verbal constructions of the world depicted. Every step in the direction of analysis comes afterwards. I think at the stage of practice art isn’t simply perceived for meaning if the phenomenon of meaning implies verbal articulation textually furnished. The process of creation often happens under the complete ignorance of un createur who hardly understands what is going on and what he/she is producing. I know, it is a bit exaggerating, but the point is that making an art work seems to be in most of the cases a spontaneous and unplanned act (to some extent, of course). So goes with the process of perceiving an art form. Ça me paraît that in the questions of encountering an art form in its fullness and primordial originality, reading, listening or watching (as you’ve mentioned) for art’s sake in pre-theoretical light is important for feeling primal meanings, not yet provided with artificial verbal constructions.
I've bolded in your post the assumption that you make about meaning, or that you make for me about my use of the word "meaning," which is mistaken in either case. Except for the explicitly verbal arts -- and even there much of the immediate response takes place below the words -- meaning is more akin to impact than articulation, and is always a matter of feeling. Think about the non-musicological experience of a piece of music, or the the first impression of a sculpture on the untutored eye. If one's encounter with a work of art fails to be in the first instance -- "meaningful" in my sense, not yours -- nothing that follows in the way of research or analysis or articulation will change that.
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Re: Which hermeneutical method is the most appropriate way to evaluate a piece of art?

Post by Count Lucanor »

Pandora wrote: August 14th, 2020, 2:49 pm Pardon. I really meant content, not context. As far as I understood, you think that newspapers and advertisements cannot be considered as a piece of art, because the form of their messages serves the content which indirectly means that the form and content in not-art appear to be, I should say, the same in the sense that distinction is absent. Audience which receives various complexes of codes from a not-art message perceives it literally: in art aesthetical code never becomes completely full and exhausted, so, as the result, observer gains an opportunity to come across with something that escapes from once and for all arranged meanings. In other words, art is art inasmuch as its meaning oscillates remaining opened to interpretations no matter of what kind – be it social conditions, intentions of the author or just way of thinking interpretator provides without referring to both social conditions and author’s intentions.
Yes, that's a fairly good account of my position regarding modern conceptions of art. I should mention, though, two things. First, as modern folks we interpret the ancient art of Egypt and Greece or the Medievals in a different way than we look at modern artistic manifestations, because the former was indistinguishable from craftwork, it was meant to be decoration, educational depictions, etc., and the artist's skills were subordinate to the main functions of art in those societies, which were not mere contemplation pleasure and social recognition of individual genius, unlike our modern consciousness of art in the last 3 or 4 centuries. Secondly, this openness that I talk about, which stems from the richness and complexity of a highly evolved art practice, should not remain unresolved forever, I mean, the artist must have achieved something, the art critic must have decoded the work and found its merits, which is in the unity, the organic correspondence between form (comprised of medium and technique) and content or effect that the artist wanted to convey. To achieve some level of interconnectedness, of organicity, between the elements of the artistic object, is what we call beauty, the aesthetic idiolect, the particular formal vocabulary of the artist that can be recognized as their style. Great artists create new styles and redefine our codes of beauty. So we know how Michaelangelo achieved a masterpiece in The Pietá sculpture: he wanted to transmit an effect to appeal to religious emotions, but faced with the marble block, he had to make formal decisions of technique and composition. He didn't depict a realistic figure, in fact it is distorted to achieve the appropriate effect (so he did with David's sculpture). The religious content or emotional effect of the piece might be less meaningful to a modern public, but the formal and technical achievement, his genius to compose and carve the figure, stands.
Pandora wrote: August 14th, 2020, 2:49 pm Once a philosopher Abraham Moles made an attempt to distinguish aesthetical code from informational (I don’t remember for sure, to be honest): he suggested that informational code is linked to the elements it contains and, because of that, meaning could be only literal, while aesthetical code remains ambiguous and somehow oriented on the context of speaking. It seems to me that form being distanciated from the content is specific about art in such a way that nothing serves nothing: I mean the principle ‘form serves the content’ as it comes into existence in not-art (newspapers, advertisements) couldn’t be applied to art pieces as well as the opposite of this principle; at the same time, form and content in art are mingled to such an from the perspective of which they become independent from each other.
It was a common discussion among Italian philosophers in the 50s. Evidently, every act of communication requires a context, and an art piece obviously communicates something (especially if the art piece was motivated by other non-artistic purposes), but in terms of artistry not in univocal, literal sense. Even more, when it becomes too obvious or literal, it is generally agreed not a very good work of art. Art criticism plays a part in showing the public how to read aesthetically a piece of art. And we got nowadays a lot of work aspiring to be true works of art by emphasizing the standard decoding, the already known canonical reading, so that no one misses that it is a work of art because it has those elements. Think of Spielberg's Schindler's List or Cuarón's Roma, shot in black and white because all great art film directors had black and white films. Most imitation looks for the literal sense, the desired interpretation. Notwithstanding that, there is indeed a place in the path of creativity for works which even though are not pretending to be truly original, do continue and further develop formal innovations or styles. But it comes a time when the style is exhausted, when there's simply nothing else to say in a distinct, original way. I think that's what happened to most modern art pretending to be avant-garde, it's actually mere craftwork sold at high prices.
Pandora wrote: August 14th, 2020, 2:49 pmYou say content carries semantic meaning which isn’t specific of any art. Let’s observe such kind of art as literature. What we have here? Verbal message which obviously bears semantic meaning. In other words, it is an art guided by content. On the other hand, the question of form (how it is written, in what genre, which of rhetorical tropes are predominant and how this fact characterizes the text) plays a very important role in literature as such. However, it is one of those cases where content is perhaps more than a half of the art piece.
Surely one can write and also appreciate prose and poetry for non-artistic reasons. In fact, that can also be the case of all cultural expressions as paint, sculpture, architecture, cinema, music, etc., in the same way that art in ancient times was entirely devoted to ritual or decorative functions. In a broad sense of the term literature, a newspaper article or scientific paper is still literature, as well as a TV ad or an educational video is cinema. So, as the Italian philosophers argued, the semantic interpretations (I include not only verbal utterances, but any symbolic use) of a piece of writing, a painting or a movie, even though can still be valued in terms of the function it serves, have little bearing on the artistic (aesthetic) value.
Pandora wrote: August 14th, 2020, 2:49 pmIn contrast, painting and music mostly imply non-verbal messages, non-verbal level of perception, but are they necessarily determined by the form of expression? Maybe in aesthetical code the connection between form and content isn’t direct (while in informational codes presented by not-art content=form), so there is a place for oscillation and ambiguity. Yes, semantic meaning isn’t specific of art. So is syntactic. Maybe the products of art are performative, so they ‘work’ in the field of pragmatics?

Maybe do not imply verbal, but still imply semantics, non-verbal semantics. I could see syntax being present in music because of the interval rules, but I'm not sure about other non-verbal arts. In any case, there's always form in any type of communication, but what makes the form aesthetic is not what it communicates either verbally or non-verbally, but how its arrangement of the formal elements produce some type of pleasure.
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Re: Which hermeneutical method is the most appropriate way to evaluate a piece of art?

Post by Terrapin Station »

Count Lucanor wrote: August 12th, 2020, 6:50 pm
Pandora wrote: August 10th, 2020, 9:28 am The best approach is to combine this contextual analysis with the purely formal analysis, beyond cultural meanings, taking the work itself as the source of its own codes, even exceeding the artist's intentions and the expectations of his/her public. We could forget about Bosch's implicit or explicit intentions in terms of social meanings, and enjoy only his artistry in that particular piece (even though it also involves looking at how he solved with formal means any message he might have tried to convey). This is not to endorse entirely Sontag's famous words: "in place of hermeneutics we need an erotics of art", but the point is not to forget that aesthetic analysis is more about form than about content. And one thing that should be eliminated from aesthetic analysis is looking for allegories.
Of course, you're simply talking about preferences that one can have (re "the best approach," re aesthetic analysis being more about form than content, etc.).

Also, many have a preference that intent shouldn't be taken into account, and there's a good point behind that in that intent often isn't and can't be known.
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Re: Which hermeneutical method is the most appropriate way to evaluate a piece of art?

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Jklint wrote: August 14th, 2020, 6:13 am The question is in a way inappropriate. To evaluate it hermeneutically means to conceptualize it's meaning by way of words which may then be expounded and argued philosophically or psychologically based on whatever sense or feeling it invokes in its analyzer. In short, a free-for-all by which evaluation is simply denoted in the way its described amounting to nothing more than a set of various impressions and speculations...the usual philosophical format for never deciding anything. Das ding an sich in art remains untouched and therefore timeless. All art which survives beyond its age remains forever contemporary.
You seem to attribute a great and grand meaning to hermeneutics, whilst managing to avoid the most important word associated with it; interpretation.
To address art hermeneutically would then mean to uncover what the meaning is. Not how you feel about it, necessarily, or what it means to you as an observer, but the intentional meaning by the artist.
Hermeneutics is a word borrowed from bible studies in which the word is used to understand the (ahem!) "true" meanings hidden in the text. The word invokes hermetic (hidden) and the process of translation or interpretation is the uncovering of that which is hidden.
I think the answer to the OP is simply - the best method is to ask the artist what does it mean?
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Re: Which hermeneutical method is the most appropriate way to evaluate a piece of art?

Post by Count Lucanor »

Terrapin Station wrote: August 19th, 2020, 10:12 am Of course, you're simply talking about preferences that one can have (re "the best approach," re aesthetic analysis being more about form than content, etc.).
As a branch of philosophy, Aesthetics surely is not comparable to natural sciences, so I guess it is always possible to claim its proposals are not to be taken as factual claims, but that of course does not automatically reduce every concept in the field to mere subjective preferences without systematization. There are aesthetic studies and theories and what I'm talking about could fit into any of them.
Terrapin Station wrote: August 19th, 2020, 10:12 am Also, many have a preference that intent shouldn't be taken into account, and there's a good point behind that in that intent often isn't and can't be known.
That was more or less my point with the Bosch's example: ultimately, we can ignore the artist's intentions. What matters is what they actually achieved in relation to the state of the field in which they worked. And the field includes the public, which adds interpretations that even the author may not be aware of.
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Re: Which hermeneutical method is the most appropriate way to evaluate a piece of art?

Post by Jklint »

Sculptor1 wrote: August 19th, 2020, 10:26 am I think the answer to the OP is simply - the best method is to ask the artist what does it mean?
...but what if the creator is no-longer alive to answer the question and never gave a clue to its meaning which is true for most art? Not least, especially in great art meaning is seldom explicit but subject to interpretation even by its creator. For example in the following by Beethoven, if you would have asked him what its meaning is he would answered very scornfully or sarcastically and that only if he wanted to remain polite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmIr-7z3XdY
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Re: Which hermeneutical method is the most appropriate way to evaluate a piece of art?

Post by Sculptor1 »

Jklint wrote: August 20th, 2020, 3:25 pm
Sculptor1 wrote: August 19th, 2020, 10:26 am I think the answer to the OP is simply - the best method is to ask the artist what does it mean?
...but what if the creator is no-longer alive to answer the question and never gave a clue to its meaning which is true for most art? Not least, especially in great art meaning is seldom explicit but subject to interpretation even by its creator. For example in the following by Beethoven, if you would have asked him what its meaning is he would answered very scornfully or sarcastically and that only if he wanted to remain polite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmIr-7z3XdY
For that we have the history of art to uncover the concerns and interests of the artist.
As for Beethoven we have a wealth o knowledge about his life and times, and specific clues about dedications of some of his greatest worlks.
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Re: Which hermeneutical method is the most appropriate way to evaluate a piece of art?

Post by Terrapin Station »

Count Lucanor wrote: August 19th, 2020, 9:41 pm As a branch of philosophy, Aesthetics surely is not comparable to natural sciences, so I guess it is always possible to claim its proposals are not to be taken as factual claims, but that of course does not automatically reduce every concept in the field to mere subjective preferences without systematization. There are aesthetic studies and theories and what I'm talking about could fit into any of them.
The fact is that aesthetic value statements factually reduce to subjective preferences ontologically. We can just ignore that if want to, I suppose, but the fact doesn't disappear.
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Re: Which hermeneutical method is the most appropriate way to evaluate a piece of art?

Post by Count Lucanor »

Terrapin Station wrote: August 20th, 2020, 5:52 pm
Count Lucanor wrote: August 19th, 2020, 9:41 pm As a branch of philosophy, Aesthetics surely is not comparable to natural sciences, so I guess it is always possible to claim its proposals are not to be taken as factual claims, but that of course does not automatically reduce every concept in the field to mere subjective preferences without systematization. There are aesthetic studies and theories and what I'm talking about could fit into any of them.
The fact is that aesthetic value statements factually reduce to subjective preferences ontologically. We can just ignore that if want to, I suppose, but the fact doesn't disappear.
All value statements, regardless of their nature, reduce to subjective preferences. That will not hinder the possibility of systematically studying our preferences, and even producing guiding models to our preferences, which become socially objective models that people adhere to or reject. There are aesthetic philosophies and aesthetic ideals following some rationale that can be objectively described. There are conventions and instituted practices that serve as a reference for the objective analysis of aesthetic objects. So we know what Cubism represents in relation to previous figurative art and we can say how that distinction relates to conceptions of the function of art in society, the role of the artist, etc., as well as to the autonomous evolution of aesthetic ideas in relation to techniques and mediums, theories of forms, ideals of beauty, etc. That's certainly a bunch of complex issues not reducible to mere subjective preferences.
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First Survivor: The Impossible Childhood Cancer Breakthrough

First Survivor: The Impossible Childhood Cancer Breakthrough
by Mark Unger
August 2023

Predictably Irrational

Predictably Irrational
by Dan Ariely
September 2023

Artwords

Artwords
by Beatriz M. Robles
November 2023

Fireproof Happiness: Extinguishing Anxiety & Igniting Hope

Fireproof Happiness: Extinguishing Anxiety & Igniting Hope
by Dr. Randy Ross
December 2023

Beyond the Golden Door: Seeing the American Dream Through an Immigrant's Eyes

Beyond the Golden Door: Seeing the American Dream Through an Immigrant's Eyes
by Ali Master
February 2024

2022 Philosophy Books of the Month

Emotional Intelligence At Work

Emotional Intelligence At Work
by Richard M Contino & Penelope J Holt
January 2022

Free Will, Do You Have It?

Free Will, Do You Have It?
by Albertus Kral
February 2022

My Enemy in Vietnam

My Enemy in Vietnam
by Billy Springer
March 2022

2X2 on the Ark

2X2 on the Ark
by Mary J Giuffra, PhD
April 2022

The Maestro Monologue

The Maestro Monologue
by Rob White
May 2022

What Makes America Great

What Makes America Great
by Bob Dowell
June 2022

The Truth Is Beyond Belief!

The Truth Is Beyond Belief!
by Jerry Durr
July 2022

Living in Color

Living in Color
by Mike Murphy
August 2022 (tentative)

The Not So Great American Novel

The Not So Great American Novel
by James E Doucette
September 2022

Mary Jane Whiteley Coggeshall, Hicksite Quaker, Iowa/National Suffragette And Her Speeches

Mary Jane Whiteley Coggeshall, Hicksite Quaker, Iowa/National Suffragette And Her Speeches
by John N. (Jake) Ferris
October 2022

In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All

In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All
by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
November 2022

The Smartest Person in the Room: The Root Cause and New Solution for Cybersecurity

The Smartest Person in the Room
by Christian Espinosa
December 2022

2021 Philosophy Books of the Month

The Biblical Clock: The Untold Secrets Linking the Universe and Humanity with God's Plan

The Biblical Clock
by Daniel Friedmann
March 2021

Wilderness Cry: A Scientific and Philosophical Approach to Understanding God and the Universe

Wilderness Cry
by Dr. Hilary L Hunt M.D.
April 2021

Fear Not, Dream Big, & Execute: Tools To Spark Your Dream And Ignite Your Follow-Through

Fear Not, Dream Big, & Execute
by Jeff Meyer
May 2021

Surviving the Business of Healthcare: Knowledge is Power

Surviving the Business of Healthcare
by Barbara Galutia Regis M.S. PA-C
June 2021

Winning the War on Cancer: The Epic Journey Towards a Natural Cure

Winning the War on Cancer
by Sylvie Beljanski
July 2021

Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream

Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream
by Dr Frank L Douglas
August 2021

If Life Stinks, Get Your Head Outta Your Buts

If Life Stinks, Get Your Head Outta Your Buts
by Mark L. Wdowiak
September 2021

The Preppers Medical Handbook

The Preppers Medical Handbook
by Dr. William W Forgey M.D.
October 2021

Natural Relief for Anxiety and Stress: A Practical Guide

Natural Relief for Anxiety and Stress
by Dr. Gustavo Kinrys, MD
November 2021

Dream For Peace: An Ambassador Memoir

Dream For Peace
by Dr. Ghoulem Berrah
December 2021