Slovak Aesthetics Forum

December 11, 2024 / 4 p.m. (CET)

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Video call link: https://meet.google.com/cuk-qtzy-unp

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UNDERSTANDING ART: EXPRESSION, IMAGINATION, AND ARETAIC STRUCTURE

In this session I will focus on imaginative understanding as underlying the production of and engagement with works of art. I draw on R. G. Collingwood’s view of expression as definitive of ‘art proper’: an ongoing, overall successful struggle against the ‘corruption of consciousness’ (understood as a special kind of cognitive and moral failure). I then suggest paying attention to the normative structure of expression thus conceived: under a Strict Aretaic Model (SAM), as opposed to a Wide Aretaic Model (WAM). Both models use the three terms of Sosa’s ‘AAA structure’, namely, aptness, accuracy, and adroitness. What defines SAM is the peculiar form that ‘accuracy’ assumes in artistic expression: as any action under WAM, expression is apt when ‘hitting the bullseye’ is due to adroitness (the virtues required for performance), but with the difference that in genuine expression we do not know what ‘hitting the bullseye’ is until we do it. The same applies to understanding the artwork: its ‘point’ is only revealed to us in first-hand understanding. Furthermore, in this view, expression and understanding are the same. Both artist and audience are engaged in shaping a perspective and making clear what the point of the work is.

The second part is devoted to show how the variantist character of SAM is in harmony with a Goodmanian view of expression and understanding, which is prima facie quite remote from a Collingwoodian approach. The purpose is to show how expression can be a cognitive achievement, directed outwards, onto the world, not to the search and manifestation of an ‘interiority’; and also to defend that the sharing of imaginative understanding is the true core of an epistemology of art.