Critique of Plato's View of Art in the Ion

Since I presented on Plato's view of art earlier in the semester, I've had some thoughts running around in my head. One such thought concern his critique of the rhapsode Ion, concerning how Ion (and also Homer) have no real knowledge but only present appearances. Now, I think that there is a very real problem here, but there is also an extent to which the criticism is misplaced.

To summarize the Ion: The rhapsode Ion, a professional performer of Homer, tries to engage Socrates in a discussion about Homer. Socrates declines, but tries to understand which sort of skill Ion actually practices. Ion doesn't really understand poetry, since then he should be able to talk about Hesiod as well, but Ion just falls asleep when listening to all poets other than Homer. But Ion doesn't really seem to have any knowledge of what is in Homer's poetry either, since it is unclear that Homer himself understands anything about which he speaks. For example, when Homer talks about divination or charioteering, then we still would need to check out the passages with a diviner or a chariot driver to know whether these passages accurately describe those skills. Homer himself cannot be relied upon directly for knowledge of these activities. Ion makes an amusing attempt to say that he has the skill of being a great general because he knows Homer, but Socrates also shoots this down: you don't hire a performer of poetry to lead your army simply because they recite poetry well. In the end, Socrates says that Ion must either be a lying scoundrel, or inspired by the gods, since Ion himself certainly doesn't know anything. Ion prefers the latter option, since it is more beautiful.

My concern is with the Platonic idea that, beyond the appearances which the poet and the rhapsode present, there is some reality that people who actually engage in skills understand. I have no problem with saying that some people understand things better than others, or even that the poets and playwrights (or in our age, perhaps political speakers, news journalists, and pastors) are often not reliable for helping us understand the world better. What I wish to argue against is the suggestion that the poet has the appearances while the skilled worker has the reality. The skilled worker merely has more appearances with which to work, and I think this has an implication for the knowledge provided by art.

Homer presents the appearance of a chariot race in the Iliad. Socrates holds that Homer may have no actual knowledge of what is involved in chariot racing, and that one must go to a real chariot driver to find out the truth. But insofar as Homer gives a coherent account, he has something to say about chariot driving. He may simply have a very good imagination; think of The Red Badge of Courage, which is supposed to accurately depict a wartime situation even though the author Stephen Crane never participated in war.

It is the coherence of the account which gives it validity, and which perhaps simply is its validity. The actual chariot driver merely has more appearances which must be drawn up into the account. This may require some adjustments; perhaps Homer's imagination doesn't cohere well with the chariot driver's actual experiences. Then again, perhaps Homer's imagination presents something upon which the chariot driver's own experiences founder; perhaps the chariot driver has never made the same sort of risky maneuver recounted in the Iliad. But in either case this is not due to anything beyond the appearances, but merely due to the unity and coherence amongst the appearances themselves.

Therefore, insofar as there is any coherence and unity in art, it gets at something in the world. It may not get at it in the best possible way (although again, in might), but there is not a strict dichotomy between the artist and the person who actually understands; there is merely the differing degrees of coherence and the number of appearances which need to be made coherent.

Thoughts on Interpretation of Art

I've been shadow teaching a philosophy of art class this semester, and today the issue of the interpretation of art came up. Now, it seems that this often in practice gets reduced to the two following options: either the artist's intent determines the meaning of the artwork, or because we can't get into the artist's mind, it's all about the audience. Granted, this is an oversimplification, but what about the artwork itself? Why do we need to go beyond it to either the artist or the audience? Alternatively, what sense could it make to say that interpretation is left largely to either the artist or audience?

Any artwork is already delimited, structured in some way. Even if I only mark a black line on a piece of paper, I still have structured that line and that paper in a given way. Even if I have left the paper blank, the paper is then blank rather than filled. So every artwork, in virtue of being an artwork, is already structured, some (like a Mozart symphony) more so than others (like John Cage's 4'33").

Any artwork is also by its very nature public. The marks, the texture, the rhythm of an artwork is something that's been put out there in some shared space using, to at least some extent, some shared symbolism or set of markings. If I write a poem, I am using language to write it. This language is not my own, but part of a larger context. The act of putting down words creates something that goes outside of myself; it means something regardless of my intention. I can write a poem and discover a meaning which I did not intend, and this seems to be a legitimate meaning of the poem. This does not mean that there is a completely determinate reading of the poem, or that there even in principle exists a definitive interpretation (there can be irreducible ambiguity and underdetermination), but merely that there is this particular form put down, one which is shared in the community, rather than some other form.

Any interpretation of an artwork must be of the artwork. If I am sitting down and watching The Purple Rose of Cairo, and I turn to a friend to talk about it, and she responds with an analysis of Jedis and the Force, then she is not giving me a bad interpretation of a Woody Allen film; she is giving me an interpretation of a different film altogether. If any artwork has a certain structure, then an interpretation must be of that structure, whether it be a line or a portrait or a blank canvas, a chant or a concerto or a folk song, etc., and so on down to the details of the individual artwork.

The biggest problem is finding the proper context of the artwork. Language is public, so if I write a poem, I have written down something with a meaning beyond what I or the audience want. But what happens when the language changes? This becomes a difficult issue, because I can no longer simply say that the author wanted the artwork to be a certain way and so that is how we should take it. The artwork is the starting point of analysis, and it is here and now this public, structured object.

For example, take the line from The Tempest: "Oh brave new world, that has such people in 't!" What is the meaning of "brave"? If I were to take it in a modern context, it would mean something like "courageous", but this word meant "good, splendid" in Shakespeare's time (cf. the Italian "bravo"). One option would be to use the context that gives the artwork the most force (admittedly a notion that needs much more development): I use the standard of Elizabethan English in interpreting Shakespeare because his plays make more sense that way. I know what a splendid world would be, and this suits Miranda's amazement in the scene in which she speaks this sentence, but I have no idea what a courageous world is and the sense I can make of the phrase doesn't fit the play.

A Bach fugue, as a Baroque piece of music, would have used terraced dynamics in its time period; that is, the individual instruments don't get louder or softer, but instrumentation is added and reduced to change the volume. But unlike the Shakespeare example, it seems possible that using later notions of dynamics in which individual instruments change volume may constitute a more powerful (more aesthetic? more coherent? I'm still searching for the right word) rendition of the score. It may not, but the possibility is open, in which case it would seem at least that there is some aspect, some potentiality of the score which Bach himself might not have noticed. The reason why this seems more likely in music than in literature may be that language is a highly complex phenomenon and changing the rules (say, by going from Elizabethan to Modern American English) is most likely going to reduce the coherence of a given piece.

The nature of interpretation will change from artwork to artwork as well. It does not need to be conceptual and linguistic. The interpretation of Stravinsky doesn't have to be a dissertation; it can simply be a certain playing of the score. Any interpretation of a painting will be, at some level, simply an appreciation of the specific way in which the brush strokes have fallen. Interpreting the artwork on these non-cognitive levels doesn't mean that there can't also be cognitive interpretations as well. In fact, on my current proposal, any way in which one interprets the given artwork (which, remember, necessarily entails that one pay attention the publicly given structure which is the artwork) is a legitimate interpretation of that artwork.