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THE MORAL NATURE OF ARTISTIC GENIUS
by
Brian Schampan Hughes
Dissertation Committee:
Professor John Baldacchino, Sponsor
Professor Graeme Sullivan
Approved by the Committee on the Degree of Doctor of Education
Date_________________________
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education in
Teachers College, Columbia University
2006
© Brian Schampan Hughes 2006
Some Rights Reserved.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. To view
a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/ or send a letter to
Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.
ii
For all my teachers
iii
Acknowledgments
My scholarship benefits from the generous support of my family, friends, and
colleagues. Writing is both a pleasure and a chore, and I am lucky that there are so many
people in my life who both value good writing and have standards for clarity of thought
and prose to which I can only aspire.
Professors Chris Higgins, John Baldacchino, Graeme Sullivan, David Hansen,
Judy Burton, and John Broughton all contributed to this project with their expertise,
insight, and patience. Additionally, I thank Professor Gary Natriello for supplementing
my graduate education with the opportunity to be a part of his work.
I am especially indebted to Chris Higgins for his impassioned philosophical
guidance. His interests and expertise greatly influenced my course of graduate study as it
was he who introduced me to MacIntyre and Gadamer. Where I have achieved success in
understanding the problems of education, it is his success.
I am grateful to my friends Brian Reilly and Matthew Slater for helping me learn
how to live as a perpetual student of philosophy—they are both great interlocutors on
topics vast and colloquial. For teaching me what it means to live as an artist, I thank
Hugo Ortega Lopez. His passion for inquiry is infectious, and without his example I
would have abandoned this project for simpler pleasures.
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For always supporting me, no matter what career or life I envisaged for myself, I
would like to thank my parents, my grandparents, and even my brother. One could not
hope for a more caring and intellectual family, and I admire them greatly.
I want especially to thank Suzanne, my wife, for her unwavering encouragement
and inspiration. As a cellist, she carries forward a vibrant and poetic tradition, and my
interest in art’s vital contributions to human flourishing redoubled when I first heard
her play. I am, and will always remain, in awe of her artistic achievement.
B. S. H.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv
Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi
List of Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
PART I–WHY GENIUS MATTERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
I–MORAL DIMENSIONS OF ART PRACTICE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1. On Excellence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.1 Wolf’s Two Kinds of Moral Saints. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.2 Problems with Wolf’s View. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.3 Moral Philosophy for Common Sense. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2. Gauguin’s Moral Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.1 Painting and Morality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.2 Reflections on Identity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.3 Portrait of a Genius. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.4 Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3. A Subject of Moral Philosophy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
II–ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
1. An Artist’s Narrative Quest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43
1.1 The Turn to Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
1.2 An Early Hypothesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
1.3 The Matter of Trust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
1.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
2. Elaboration of MacIntyre’s Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56
2.1 Traditions and Anti-Traditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3. Art as Inquiry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.1 Kinds of Inquiry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
3.2 Aesthetic Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
3.3 John Dewey’s Philosophy of Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
3.4 Art for One’s Self. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .78
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III–CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80
1. The Problem of Artistic Genius. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
1.1 A Brief Genealogy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
1.2 Research Questions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
2. Methodology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .89
2.1 My Approach to the Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .89
2.2 My Analysis of the Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
2.3 My Argument for Artists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
2.4 My Aim as a Philosopher of Art Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .96
3. Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .99
3.1 Moralities and Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .102
3.2 Disciplinary Boundaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
PART II–HOW WE THINK ABOUT ARTISTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
IV–SOCIAL DIMENSIONS OF MORALITY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
1. Lessons From Psychology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
2. Attribution Theory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .109
2.1 Epistemic Foundations of Morality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
2.2 Minimal Persons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
2.3 Attribution Biases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .117
3. The Third Person Perspective. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
3.1 Genius as a Trait. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123
4. Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .126
V–ACHIEVEMENT OF SUBORDINATION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
1. Excellence in Practices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .128
1.1 Philosophy of Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .133
2. The Value of Educational Goods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .137
2.1 MacIntyre’s View of Subordination. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .137
2.2 The Development of Excellence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
2.3 Two Kinds of Goods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
3. Education Without Virtue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .145
3.1 Teachers and Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
3.2 The Practice of Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
4. Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .156
VI–HERMENEUTIC EXCELLENCE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
1. Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
1.1 Artworks as Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
2. The Nature of Understanding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .169
2.1 Subordination as Coming to an Agreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
2.2 Subordination as a Path of Understanding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
2.3 Subordination as a Traditionary Event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .181
2.4 Subordination as Hermeneutic Excellence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .189
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3. Verticality in Practices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .194
4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
PART III–CRITIQUE OF GENIUS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .197
VII–MORALITY AS SUCH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .198
1. The Metaphysical Tradition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
2. The Way Kant Saw Nature in the Subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .200
2.1 What Counts as Nature. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
2.2 Two Kinds of Beauty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
3. Boundaries of the Concept of Genius. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
3.1 Two Kinds of Excellence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
3.2 Originality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
3.3 Exemplarity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
3.4 Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
4. The Moral Wilderness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
VIII–WHY EDUCATION MATTERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
1. Where We Are Now. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .229
2. Awareness of Genius. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .230
3. Implications for Pedagogy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .237
4. The Future of Art Education. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
REFERENCES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .246
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List of Figures
Figure 1. Paul Gauguin, Self-Portrait with Portrait of Émile Bernard, 1888. . . . . . . . . .28
Figure 2. Paul Gauguin, Self-Portrait with Halo, 1889. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31
Figure 3. Paul Gauguin, Self-Portrait with Yellow Christ, 1889. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32
Figure 4. Paul Gauguin, Christ in the Garden of Olives, 1889. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34
Figure 5. Pablo Picasso, Weeping Woman, 1937 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Figure 6. Pablo Picasso, Weeping Woman, 1937 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Figure 7. Pablo Picasso, Weeping Woman, 1937 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Figure 8. Brian Hughes, Untitled (5 of 7), 2005. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Figure 9. Photograph from War Images (Hughes, 2005). Artwork: Brian
Hughes, Untitled (21 Images), 2005. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Figure 10. Photograph from War Images (Hughes, 2005). Artworks: Brian
Hughes, Untitled (9 Images), 2005 [left]. Brian Hughes, Untitled (6 of 7),
2005 [right] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .166
Figure 11. Brian Hughes, Untitled (6 of 7), 2005. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .168
Figure 12. Brian Hughes, Untitled (7 of 7), 2005. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .168
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1
INTRODUCTION
In addition to inquiry, history, and craftsmanship, art education should be
about learning how to live as an artist. As such, it can be more than advisement about
prudence or perseverance—it can be about nurturing a young artist’s intellectual and
emotional sense of himself or herself. Ultimately, this sense of self has many different
aspects and therefore goes by many names—self-esteem, self-knowledge, identity,
critical awareness, critical consciousness, metacognition, and so on—but I believe it is
best understood more broadly as a feature of moral life. By this I mean to suggest that
the cultivation of this sense of self is saddled with the array of philosophical problems
that supervene on one’s conception of morality, and pedagogy should therefore
respond to those problems. This convergence of philosophy and education is the legacy
of Western ethics in contemporary art practice.
According to this view, art practice is a central feature of artists’ lives. Though
it is a contested matter as to how the terms “ethics” and “morality” should obtain to
everyday life, here I follow a philosophical tradition that understands them both as
pertaining (similarly) to “goodness” as excellence. The notion of moral excellence is
different than artistic excellence, and the purpose of philosophizing about art practice
2
in this way is to invite artists to reflect on the impact and significance of their ordinary
endeavors. I believe Socrates was right in his assertion that such reflection is part of
living a good life.
Reflection as such often leads artists to consider how their projects and
processes emerge from interactions with other artists—one kind of artistic influence.
Given that the lives of practicing artists are shaped by diverse interactions of this kind,
given that these interactions inform ongoing dialogues about art, and given that these
dialogues shape both the surrounding culture and the reception of art, artists should
have a theoretical and practical interest in this aspect of art practice. Social interactions
of this kind can be treated philosophically as a special kind of influence which will here
be considered as an essential aspect of art practice, at least with respect to the aims and
institutions of art education.
There are many details about interpersonal relationships that artists can
investigate, and many vibrant discourses in which these investigations can proceed:
psychology, social psychology, sociology, and anthropology to name a few. For
theorizing about more universal modes of interaction on a more abstract level,
however, artists can and should turn to philosophy in general, and moral philosophy in
particular. One overarching argument of my dissertation is that virtue ethics—a
particular discourse in moral philosophy—is useful for understanding art practice
because it treats the evaluation of extraordinary achievements in diverse dimensions of
social practices as a primary task of social life. It is well suited, therefore, as an
3
explanatory framework for practices whose contributions to social life can be amplified
by the methodological rigor of the human sciences.
Morality is one concept that intersects with art practice in many ways, and it is
often invoked in discussions about artists and art practices by a wider community. To
better regulate these discussions, and carve out a space for art in those communities,
artists will benefit from understanding the various meanings of the concept and how
they are deployed as rhetorical strategies. This understanding is not easily achieved, and
artists will find themselves working alongside philosophers to untangle the long
history and many aspects of morality. One helpful method, however, will be to
understand the distinctive historical parts and features of the broader and more
universal concept: notions, for example, such as “goodness” and “moral excellence” that
resonate within particular moral traditions.
Some virtue ethicists—often referred to as “communitarians”—claim that the
meaning of moral excellence, like morality itself, is negotiated within a community.
Here I will argue that the concept of “artistic genius” poses a great difficulty for artists
affected by this negotiation. As a result, because of its association with “talent” as the
“natural” arbiter of artistic success as well as the entrenched and often perplexing
philosophical discourse that seeks to explain it, the concept of genius is poised to
unhinge young artists from tradition—a potential educational disruption that
undermines art practice as a site of meaningful (and, therefore, fulfilling) activity.
The aim of my dissertation is to rehabilitate the concept of genius for artists
who seek to engage art practice despite widespread disagreement about what makes art
4
“good.” I argue that the concept exerts a powerful influence on artists, and that its
rehabilitation is seen partly as a debunking of what artists and philosophers have
hitherto understood as genius, and partly as an explanation of the artistic activity that
often coincides with that recognition. Part I of my dissertation explores the
foundational elements of this critique beginning with an overview of the ongoing
difficulties of moral theory.
In Chapters I and II, I illustrate how the concept of artistic genius can impact
artists and their art practices. I show how the concept of artistic genius influenced the
life and art of Paul Gauguin. Gauguin serves as a useful example for moral philosophy
because he achieved eminence in the artworld while ordering his life and values in an
uncommon way according to prevailing social norms. His example shows how
perceptions of excellence in one sphere of social life can conflict with what is deemed
immoral in another. I make the case that supererogation is wrongly distinguished from
moral goodness on the grounds that art practice is only one aspect of an artist’s “whole
life” (as well as the society in which he or she lives). Susan Wolf’s discussion of moral
saints prepares moral philosophers for this tension. Saintliness, she claims, is not a
tenable moral ideal because it requires that ordinary people (and philosophers) hold the
view that achievement in a specific and narrow set of human behaviors defines our
conception of goodness. Her discussion of the possible outcomes for moral philosophy
is ultimately not as interesting as her discussion of common sense, which she
foregrounds as intertwined with assumptions about morality. If we take her argument
one step further and take common sense seriously, we find that practical ideals are a
5
better indicator of social values, of which “saintliness” is only one name for excellence
among many. In this way, moral evaluation is shown to be practice-specific, and a
conceptualization of the social qualities of art practice can proceed on a sturdier
philosophical foundation.
Starting a critique of genius with an eye to the problem of eminence and
supererogation in a moral context, I then discuss genius as a conceptual problem in my
own experience of art making and art practice in Chapter II. I reflect on how my
engagement with artistic processes is complicated by philosophical discourses
surrounding art, and how I am able to sustain artistic production only through those
discourses by arriving at an understanding of art as inquiry. The view that art practice
should be cultivated as a space for inquiry is articulated as a grounding assumption of
the critique of genius that follows, and John Dewey’s philosophy of education serves as
a touchstone for this naturalistic view. Chapter III presents a conceptual framework
for my dissertation and shows 1) how a critique of genius fits with other research and
2) what are the aims and limitations of the critique.
From the perspective of moral philosophy, the concept of genius is related to
the relationship between individuals and tradition. Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophy
speaks to these relationships, and Alasdair MacIntyre’s philosophy locates Gadamer’s
theory of understanding as a moral one from the perspective of artists and art practice.
In Part II—Chapters IV, V, and VI—I critique MacIntyre’s view of education, and put
forward a framework for understanding moral excellence that is informed by the field
of moral psychology. I argue that a student’s relationship to a teacher can be analogous
6
to a mature practitioner’s experience of tradition, and that MacIntyre’s theory of
“entering into practices” leads to a valuable and defensible philosophy of education—
one that is grounded in the history of ethics, and therefore capable of sustaining the
sense of artistic achievement as a social and historical process. Finally, I discuss
Gadamer’s hermeneutic model of tradition as a model of moral excellence. I propose
that hermeneutic excellence—what I call an educational good—drives subordination
and sustains vertical relationships among artists.
In Part III of the dissertation, I turn to Immanuel Kant’s view of genius to test
how well my model of hermeneutic excellence maps onto the historic concept of
genius. Kant proposes that a genius is a creator of original and exemplary artworks,
and in Chapter VII, I argue that Kant’s view of beauty leads to his misunderstanding of
originality and exemplarity. My critique of genius ends with a discussion of its
relevance for moral philosophy as a more elegant description of “forward-thinking”
practitioners than has thus far been available to MacIntyrian virtue ethicists. Chapter
VIII considers how subordination and hermeneutic excellence influence communities
in which artists live and work, and draws out the implications of this conceptualization
of genius for artists and art educators.
7
PART I–WHY GENIUS MATTERS
Being an Art Student, we proudly recognized, entailed
many diverse and complicated activities. The most
important of these activities included: i) Wearing clothes
that were made, or at least altered, at home. ii) Smoking
lesser-known brands of cigarettes. iii) Drinking far more
coffee than is good for someone your age, or any age for
that matter. iv) Discussing the set design or lighting
instead of the plot of any randomly chosen television
show, including cartoons. v) Being unemployed, or if it
was absolutely necessary for you to be employed, at least
have the decency to do so sporadically.
T. Gregory Argall, 2006, p. 1.
8
I–MORAL DIMENSIONS OF ART PRACTICE
1. On Excellence
Artistic genius is rarely confused with saintliness. Pablo Picasso is widely
believed to be the greatest painter of the twentieth century, but he was also an arrogant
and belligerent womanizer. Recognizing genius or saintliness becomes more complex,
however, when one tries to discern geniuses and saints among broader populations of
artists or morally excellent persons. What makes a person suited for such recognition?
How good must one be, and in what way? Though suspicion about the nature of
genius and saintliness may arise, we have ways of negotiating this recognition in
everyday life. We make judgments that emerge from various and diverse motivations,
and the precision of our judgment is often of no great concern. Though this tells us
nothing of our accuracy in such matters, it should serve to remind us that both
concepts serve us in tangible, if different, ways.
I offer the comparison between saints and geniuses because I am interested in
understanding the concept of artistic genius within a moral framework. I am also,
however, interested in a different framework for discerning “moral excellence” than is
9
typical of our ordinary notion of morality,1 and Susan Wolf’s (1982) observations about
moral saints help to open a normative discussion about moral excellence understood in
this special way.2 Specifically—and this is also an aim of my dissertation—she
demonstrates how identifying and characterizing a type or class of persons can impact
the way philosophers do ethics. Wolf claims that the case of moral saints—individuals
who are commonly understood to be “as morally worthy as can be” (Wolf, 1982, p.
29)—presents a problem for moral philosophers. By showing why, counter to intuition,
sainthood is not a compelling ideal to which individuals should aspire, she aims to
refine how philosophers can construct moral theories.3 Her argument helps both to
foreground the conceptual complexity of genius, and opens a more fruitful dialogue
about the intersection of art and morality than is typical of artworld discourses.
1
The use of a moral framework is motivated by my interest in expanding our moral vocabulary to
include such things as excellence in the arts. I follow philosophers such as Bernard Williams
(1985) who argue that “morality” commonly—and wrongly—refers only to a subset of ethical
considerations. Thus, what Williams refers to as “ethics,” I optimistically call “moral life.” For an
extended discussion of what counts as ethical consideration, see Williams (1985), especially
Chapter I.
2
Flanagan (1991) helpfully cautions against Anscombe’s recommendation that the term “moral” be
jettisoned by contrasting her Aristotelian vision of philosophical psychology with Kohlberg’s stark
depiction of justice as the primary good of modernity (pp. 181-183). I will attempt to use the term
with restraint, and discuss the terms “morality” and “ethics” at length below, especially in Chapter
IV, Section 2.1.
3
Wolf orients her audience toward a thoughtful view of a relevant aspect of morality—saintliness—
in the process of undertaking this other project. This educative, practical function of philosophy
also motivates my project.
10
1.1 Wolf’s Two Kinds of Moral Saints
Wolf distinguishes between two kinds of moral saints in Western culture:
loving saints and rational saints. Each kind of saint is driven by a unique motivational
system, she argues, even though all saints are committed to “improving the welfare of
others or of society as a whole” (Wolf, 1982, p. 30). The former is predisposed to enjoy
the promotion of the welfare of others, while the latter promotes others’ welfare by
choice (p. 30). But Wolf quickly makes a distinction between these internal motivations
and a saint’s public persona, thus arriving at a general definition of moral sainthood as
the possession and cultivation of a disposition that enables one to act “as justly and
kindly toward others as possible” (p. 31). In doing so, she arrives at a sensible, social—
though somewhat thin—conception of saintliness that begins to tease apart the inner
nature of “common sense” morality as she understands it.
The moral saint is contrasted with a person possessing a more moderate moral
temperament. While an ordinary person can spend time “reading Victorian novels,
playing the oboe, or improving his backhand” (p. 31)—what she describes as nonmoral
virtues—these activities are practically inaccessible to the saint, whose attention is
concentrated on performing selfless acts. Indeed, as she articulates how the saint is
different in scope and kind, the unlikelihood of sainthood becomes palpable. We are as
impressed with the saint’s drive and devotion to others’ needs as we are startled by the
starkness of such a life. In this way, an essential characteristic of moral sainthood on
11
Wolf’s account is the narrowing of a life around a small set of what she calls “moral
virtues”—what are more commonly understood as selfless acts.
It seems troublesome that our ordinary notion of morality is often governed by
such extremes, yet this spectrum is practically definitive of morality. Indeed, Wolf’s
depiction of sainthood along these lines colors the domain of morality from the outset.
One could object, for example, that sainthood has nothing to do with degrees of
selflessness. I believe Wolf’s response would be that this contradicts the fact that saints
do exist and our awareness of their saintliness is clearly predicated on such
characteristics. This situation, therefore, leaves us wanting alternative examples of
moral excellence which will, if not contradict saintliness as vision of the good life, at
least diversify the ends in view. To this effect, Wolf contrasts the moral saint with
individuals who have high moral standards but are not similarly exemplary. These
virtuous non-saints are defined by such qualities as “coolness” and “gracefulness,” and
Wolf elides a finer distinction between these and other virtue-like qualities, insisting
that these qualities expand our conception of morality precisely because they are
“nonmoral” (1982, p. 32). 4 Either way, as nonmoral virtues or as the very kind of
virtues that some moral theorists imagine, I agree with Wolf that such cases serve to
4
The notion of “nonmoral virtues” seems to confuse the matter more than it helps. On one hand, I
take Wolf to be using the term “virtue” to be synonymous with a personal trait, which seems to beg
the question of how virtue necessarily constitutes moral sainthood. Virtue and saintliness seem
inseparable precisely because of her ordinary language approach which implies that virtues are
essentially moral, even if we allow her use of the redundant term “moral virtue” to lend a
philosophical punch to her argument. Lacking a distinction here, there is no immediately obvious
connection between the case of moral saints and moral philosophy, insofar as moral philosophy
would be completely unhinged from the history of virtue that gathers itself and makes sense of the
narrow quality of saintliness.
12
orient us in an ever wider milieu of culture and expand our perception of degrees of
goodness in persons.
The problem that remains, then, is the way moral goodness is configured. That
is, a virtuous non-saint is able to balance her commitments to competing ideals, but a
saint cannot, as “the desire to be as morally good as possible is apt to have the character
not just of a stronger but of a higher desire, which does not merely successfully
compete with one’s other desires but which rather subsumes or demeans them” (p. 32).
Thus, according to Wolf’s understanding of common sense morality, the belief that
selflessness is the highest moral good casts a long shadow over our shared conception
of morality. Since we are likely (in a greater public) to encounter individuals who are
predisposed toward saintliness or who actively choose selflessness as a way of life, we
are forced from time to time to confront the inadequacies of this thin ideal.
Though it seems counterintuitive, perhaps it should not surprise us that
exemplary moral personalities, according to the ideal of moral saints, do not inspire us.
As Wolf suggests, we have more nuanced standards for moral excellence that go
unstated or unacknowledged when we esteem the moral saint as an exemplar of
morality. Similarly, she cites the lack or denial of an identifiable, personal self as the key
feature not only of the moral saint, but shared by “the conception of the pure aesthete,
by a certain kind of religious ideal, and, somewhat paradoxically, by the model of the
thorough-going, self-conscious egoist” (p. 33). Thus, she offers us a glimpse at a
strange aspect of contemporary morality—some ideals of which short-circuit the
possibilities for unique and differentiated (according to lifestyle) individuals.
13
Exemplary personalities such as moral saints, Wolf goes on to argue, do not
serve to inspire us because they are not in fact exemplary. That is, she claims the
common sense view that associates extremeness with exemplarity is sometimes
misguided. She claims that these personalities often embody “ways of comprehending
the world… [that] compete with what we ordinarily mean by ‘morality,’” and that as
personal ideals they are “straightforwardly immoral” (p. 33).5 This claim is based on her
observation that it is “not how much [the saint] loves morality, but… how little he
loves… other things” (p. 33). That is, because the saint is myopic in his actions, we can
also interpret his behavior as the result of disinterestedness. Here, her strategy of
deploying a thinly wrought depiction of moral saints as perfectly selfless pays off—the
saint cum straw man represented by few actual personalities transforms easily into a
portrait of moral deformation.
The matter of whether a saint is necessarily (or even possibly) morally good
seems doubtful—Wolf carefully insulates the ideal of the saint from the realities that
make it a less interesting concept to her. But how can this be right? By accounting for
some “inadequacies” of common sense, she successfully avoids rejecting saintliness as
an ideal (though she all but claims we are wrong to think of saints as exemplary), and
shifts the discussion of morality to a different ground. She sacrifices the saint,
figuratively speaking, to make room for a view of morality that recognizes diverse ends
of personhood as on par with, and perhaps even preferable to, the moral worth of the
5
This claim reveals an agenda that accommodates complexity in everyday life, yet Wolf
14
myopic saint. She challenges the ordinary conception of the value of sainthood by
claiming that a common sense view of moral excellence commits us to a different ideal.
I will call this her expansionist argument.
1.2 Problems with Wolf’s View
Wolf’s work to locate the discussion of saints in moral theory becomes a serious
weakness for her account of morality. By simultaneously upholding saintliness as an
ideal but criticizing it as a compelling model, her argument occupies a strange middle
ground between widening the scope of moral theory—to include such things as
“striving toward achieving any of a great variety of forms of personal excellence” (p.
34)—and restricting the scope of what “morality” may describe. Moral philosophers are
no strangers to the tension here. Wolf discusses how her attempt to depict the moral
saint originates from “attitudes and beliefs about morality prevalent in contemporary,
common sense thought” (p. 34), and, aware of the tensions that arise, admits that “it is
often claimed that the goal of moral philosophy is to correct and improve upon
common sense morality” (p. 35). Wolf wants to apply moral philosophy to resolve
conflicts between moralities—or within a morality—and call this meta-ethics. Based on
the irony about saints to which Wolf draws our attention, moral philosophy seems
unlikely to achieve this goal, for it is not only a case of conceptual confusion—where an
successfully avoids imputing the quality of well-roundedness as a more satisfactory “highest good.”
15
ideal is really not an ideal—but it is also unclear that there would be room for
improvement. For how, we might ask, should one go about correcting common sense?
To no really fruitful end, she uses the case of the moral saint as a litmus test for
both utilitarian and Kantian ethics, and claims these theories are woefully inadequate to
take on complex issues of personhood (e.g., adopting a ready-made utilitarian
discourse, she speculates that the moral saint is naturally suited to bringing about
more “happiness” in the world than the average person’s disposition of wellroundedness). The best thing that could be said about this part of her essay is that it
sounds the death-knoll for an unhelpful trend in moral philosophy, which is best
articulated by Bernard Williams (whom she cites) as the over-simplification of the
domain of morality. She “begins again” by taking Kantian and utilitarian theories—“the
leading moral theories of our time” (p. 35)—as starting points, and her newly-wrought,
two-pronged story of moral saints (i.e., the “common sense” view) as a rival theory that
will perhaps push against or support one of these theories.
Wolf insists that her story of moral saints is not inconsistent with either
theory, and that moral theories in general are overvalued as theories that tell us “what
it would be good for a person to be” (p. 40). By teasing apart the strong prescriptive
aspects of Kantianism and utilitarianism from the merely descriptive aspects, she
pushes back the question of how ideals compel us to act differently than we would
otherwise act. We are left with theories that merely lump some people together
according to the degree to which they act selflessly. Wolf seems unwilling to entertain
moral theories that begin with a positive conception of the self. Thus, her response to
16
Aristotelian and Nietzschean approaches to morality falls flat.6 Instead of aligning
morality with goodness, she characterizes it as “the point of view one takes up insofar as
one takes the recognition of the fact that one is just one person among others equally
real and deserving of the good things in life as a fact with practical consequences” (p.
41)—an articulation that relies on a parochial, and particularly materialistic, attitude
toward goodness. Morality would be born of a sense of commonality and a recognition
of inequality.
This resonates as a reasonable, contemporary, and Western definition of
morality, but it does not follow from her earlier claim that moral philosophy is
committed to correcting and improving upon common sense morality. What Wolf calls
“the point of view of individual perfection” is awkwardly divorced from “the moral point
of view,” and it seems disingenuous to treat individual perfection as a nonmoral
component of common sense morality. Or at least, if morality is so theoretically
restricted, then we should expect some greater payoff from moral philosophy. As if
there were already enough goodwill in the world, even while we are not personally
contributing time and energy to increase the welfare of others, Wolf’s reasoning simply
affords us the chance to cast off our remaining pangs of guilt.
6
Wolf seems to miss the point of these alternative approaches entirely when she says, “it is doubtful
that any single, or even any reasonable small number of substantial personal ideals could capture
the full range of possible ways of realizing human potential or achieving human good which
deserve encouragement or praise” (1982, p. 39). Refuting grand narratives and unified accounts of
morality seems to be very much the point of these other theories.
17
With this strange turn of her argument in mind, it seems to me one has to
abandon up front the notion that morality pertains to a special aspect of personhood
(such as selflessness), and replace it with the notion that morality has to do with a
broad conception of excellence.7 This cuts to the chase of the philosophical difficulty
represented by moral saints. Instead of admitting that the moral saint represents the
ideal of common sense morality up front, one can simply approach this as one ideal
among others. As a philosophical approach, this more accurately reflects actually held
ideals—the preferences we have for the “Betsy Trotwoods and Father Browns,” who she
cites as compelling figures for the ways their dispositions cut against the ideal of
saintliness— as well as admit a lack of trustworthy data on the matter. For when moral
philosophers start talking about “unequivocally compelling personal ideals,” it is
perhaps best to be suspicious about the conversations that follow.
What Wolf seems to desire from the outset is conceptual clarity about morality
itself. For it is less a problem that moral saints are too selfless, than it is a problem of
moral saints being actual ideals for moral philosophers in the business of both
characterizing a shared vision of morality in a culture, or, conversely, classifying
varieties of moral personality. By beginning with common sense morality as a
framework, Wolf is limited to a particular philosophical register—one that aims to leave
7
Excellence, even more than goodness, seems to capture the prescriptive nature of “common sense
morality.” In doing so, it may also go hand-in-hand with a concern for, and emphasis of, the
individual. I will return to this matter below in Chapter V, Section 1.1.
18
intact certain normative values and beliefs. Especially worrisome for me is the thought
that moral philosophy is essentially limited by what can pass as common sense.
Unlike Wolf, I would prefer there be more personal reasons for embarking on
quests for conceptual clarity. I believe (along pragmatic and hermeneutic lines of
thought) that one’s initial trajectory has consequences for the whole affair. Without
such an orientation in inquiry, one runs the risk of basing new hypotheses upon
already doubtful conjecture (as Wolf achieves in the case of imagining the utilitarian
and Kantian reactions to the moral saint), which then throws a dim light on the whole
business of theorizing. Wolf’s essay demonstrates not only how bracketing out
complexities can be instrumental for the meta-ethicist, but also how easily theory can
lose traction on the problems that motivate theorists. That is, just because common
sense morality can be backed into a corner (where it is swiftly shown to contain
contradictory impulses), it does not follow that philosophers should aim to “purify” the
meaning or significance of our moralities.
1.3 Moral Philosophy for Common Sense
Contrary to Wolf’s view, conceptual clarity about morality is not what is shown
to be needed when confronting the case of moral saints, even (and especially) from the
perspective of meta-ethics. The theory she calls for is too thin—uninterested in
everyday (“nonmoral”) human experiences and not sensitive enough to the history of
ethics. Instead, analyses of our ideals seem to be in order, and a moral theory that is
19
attentive to the thick language of human activity is needed. Insofar as an ideal
intersects with what is understood to be morality, such an analysis could explore
tensions between the so-called morality of common sense and other moral theories in
ways that aim to settle conceptual disputes. Her expansionist argument will be shown
to be admirable in this regard. But recent work in moral philosophy may be beside the
point when a more focused historical and conceptual analysis gets off the ground.8
It is just this kind of analysis I have in mind here. The ideal of the artistic
genius, if not precisely represented by the notion of pure aestheticism, fits quite well on
Wolf’s list of ideal types that problematically represent moral excellence. As Wolf
shows, the nature of ideals raises many questions, so a rich discussion of genius is only
possible if we begin with the complexities of ideals in view. We should ask, for example,
if the genius is seen to be similar to the saint, how could he both represent and not
represent moral excellence? And perhaps we can question, without conceiving of the
work of moral philosophy as starkly hypothetical as Wolf does, what the concept of
artistic genius means for morality. This is possible if we accept as a premise that artistic
genius in a name for artistic excellence.
If moral excellence is understood as achievement within a social sphere whether
this means helping other people or making art, then moral philosophers can conceive
of morality as a function of education. From an educational perspective, for example,
the developmental picture of being a good person is similar to becoming a good artist.
8
If the aim of philosophy is to be prescriptive, then moral philosophy and “common sense morality”
20
Must this only imply a developmental similarity? To what extent do beauty and
goodness, commonly understood as two different kinds of excellence, overlap?9 To
what extent must they overlap? In surveying art history, we are forced to admit that
many great artists have been less than excellent people in other aspects of life. Is this a
problem for philosophy? Or is it a clue for better understanding excellence in art?
As Wolf has shown, a philosopher must construct a moral theory that has
something to say about supererogation while often remaining quiet about other
“nonmoral” ideals. I will follow these recommendations only in part. By developing a
multifaceted conception and understanding of artistic development, I hope to highlight
various aspects of education, as well as contribute to and modify the social imaginary of
contemporary artists and art educators. In the following section, to make my interest in
morality clearer still, I examine the effect of the concept of genius on the art practice of
a person with uncommon sense—Paul Gauguin. By first looking at the effect of the
concept, I show not how common sense contains contradictory views about morality
(or even how moral philosophy is wrong about common sense), but how the concept is
compatible with a common understanding of moral excellence.
This section, an historical vignette, describes the intersection of art making and
moral excellence. Gauguin, whose art is widely recognized as innovative and emotional,
serves as an extreme example of the close relationship between an artist’s work, his
should have more in common when both are done well.
9
I will discuss the relation between beauty and goodness at length below in Chapter VII, Section 3.1.
21
interpretation of his work, and the details of his life. Art critic Peter Schjeldahl
observes, “Gauguin’s contributions to painting were tremendous. His use of
emotionally fraught secondary colors—aromatic strains of green, orange, and purple—
was innovative, as was his way of making paint and line practically independent of each
other” (Schjeldahl, 2002, July 29, p. 83). Innovation such as this may prompt
educational questions: Are these examples of the highest good that can be achieved in
painting? How is it achieved, and at what cost? And moral questions may follow: Is a
“good” such as this the same as excellence? Is excellence the same as virtue (is virtue
related to excellence or altogether different)? If not, can excellence be translated as
some kind of virtue? Is excellence misunderstood in relation to virtue? What would all
this mean for the concept of genius? A closer look at Gauguin’s art and life will show
these to be helpful questions for considering the potential and value of art education.
2. Gauguin’s Moral Life
2.1 Painting and Morality
The social currents in the Parisian artworld fed into Gauguin’s perception of
himself as an artist—he was, after all, first persuaded to take his painting seriously by
his contemporaries (Perruchot, 1963, pp. 70-75). Romanticism and religion, two
22
influential social currents in the nineteenth century, are represented in Gauguin’s
artworks. While these two features of artistic consciousness overlap, I propose that the
concept of genius—as an expression of Romanticism—especially propelled Gauguin’s
artistic and spiritual quests. Gauguin abandoned his family and social context in middle
age to live as a poor, reclusive painter, ultimately living in Tahiti as an estranged and
unhealthy expatriate until his untimely death. Gauguin’s artworks, in conjunction with
his writing, are evidence that a conception of genius was an underlying feature of his
art and life—a comprehensive good that shaped his reception of tradition and
transformed his whole life into a mythic quest.
We could presume to learn about Gauguin’s self-image from his letters to his
wife and friends, but the man we encounter there is enigmatic; we see him as he
presented himself differently to different people. The Gauguin we encounter through
art appears equally enigmatic—his diverse oeuvre contains conflicting ideas about his
relation to art—but the sheer intensity of the information gives our observations
traction. Among his paintings we may analyze to gain insight into his self-image as an
artist, there is a genre of painting that stands out: self-portraiture. That Gauguin was
interested in self-portraiture is not easily overlooked: he made over forty different
images of his own likeness in several different mediums, including more than twenty
oil paintings. Looking closely at several examples of his self-portraiture reveals how a
conception of genius shaped his life, but first we need to know how to look.
To understand Gauguin’s formation as an artist, and his choice to pursue art
making, we should consider the living tradition of painting in France in the 1880’s,
23
where Gauguin first entered the world of art more as a spectator than as an active
practitioner. As a banker and part-time painter, he formed friendships with several
impressionist painters, including Degas and Monet, who later convinced him to take
his own art seriously. By the time he committed to living as an artist in 1883, Pissarro
had become a major influence in his life; it was Pissarro who first invited him to show
his landscapes with the Impressionists at the Salon of 1879 (Perruchot, 1963, p. 76).
Pissarro “taught Gauguin what he had already taught other painters; he was an
enthusiastic upholder of the ‘clear’ palette’” (p. 72). It was partly through Pissarro,
therefore, that Gauguin’s work came to be identified with Impressionism.
Gauguin became increasingly immersed in Impressionism, although there was
as much variation among Impressionist artists as there were differences of opinion in
the greater circle of French painting, and he would ultimately think of himself as
moving beyond it. The Impressionists were transforming the style and content of
painting by rejecting academic training; their paintings asserted the authenticity of the
artist’s experience in the world. Furthermore, the Parisian artworld’s reception of these
pictures reinforced the focusing of tradition on self-expression. This “pathway of
discharge,” as Gombrich conceives it (cited by Theodore Reff, personal communication,
April 10, 2002), irrevocably shaped Gauguin as a proponent of the first “modernist”
avant-garde—demonstrated throughout his work, but particularly evident in his selling
of erotic Tahitian imagery back to the Parisian public (Schjeldahl, 2002, July 29, p. 84).
From this lineage, he inherited an approach to painting that prized the artist’s
freedom—and desire—to pursue a personal vocabulary.
24
In the nineteenth century, an artistic genius was seen as exemplary because he
was believed to create models that others followed.10 He was seen as a creator of original
works of art—original because these models were apparently created ex nihilo. Gauguin
partly appeared as a genius because, in contrast to many of his contemporaries, he was
able to create a distinctive visual and sensuous vernacular in his paintings. With some
use of hyperbole, Collingwood (1938/1958) describes the effect this recognition of
genius often had on artists:
In the later nineteenth century the artist walked among us as a superior being,
marked off even by his dress from common mortals; too high and ethereal to be
questioned by others, too sure of his superiority to question himself, and
resenting the suggestion that the mysteries of his craft should be analysed and
theorized about by philosophers and other profane persons. (p. 5)
The story of Post-Impressionism is not so simple. In contrast to Gauguin’s
circle, there was another group of artists who developed more technical solutions to
the problems of Impressionism (Theodore Reff, personal communication, April 10,
2002). Seurat, a main figure in this group of “Neo-Impressionists,” created more
impersonal pictures. His innovative cross-hatching and pointillist techniques of
applying paint to the canvas were used to construct images with more specific social
and political themes. Even before these characteristics appear in paintings, like Sunday
Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-85, 1887), his interest in the
descriptive aim of art appears in such improbably unemotional images as his aptly titled
10
I will discuss the history of this belief in Chapter III, Section 1. A note on gendered pronouns,
however, is called for here. Women have been infrequently believed to be geniuses due, no doubt,
to gender discrimination. While unfortunate, this has affected the meaning of the term, so I will
25
self-portrait An Artist in a Studio (1884). The first criterion of Romantic genius,
originality, is fulfilled in Seurat’s work, but not in the form of a self-conscious vision of
the artist we will see in Gauguin’s self-portraits. Seurat’s work may be a work of genius,
but the subject of the work is not genius. In this way, the work of other artists frames
Gauguin’s work as a particularly dramatic example of the effect of Romanticism on
artistic consciousness.
Seurat does meet the criterion of Gauguin’s conception of artistic greatness. In
Gauguin’s opinion, “the great artist is the embodiment of the greatest intelligence. The
sentiments and renderings which occur to him are the most delicate and, consequently,
the most invisible products of the human brain” (as cited in Guérin, 1978, p. 4). Here
he is speaking about color, tones, imaginative backgrounds, meaningful narratives, and
the placement of the horizon (high) in Cézanne’s work. He continues, “in short, when
you see a painting by Cézanne, you cry, ‘How strange!’” (as cited in Guérin, 1978, p. 4).
The same could be said of Gauguin’s own work, and he often writes about his success
as an artist. For example, in a letter to his then estranged wife, Mette, he writes, “I am a
great artist and I know it” (as cited in Mittelstädt, 1968, p. 29). In 1890, he describes
himself as a “searching and thinking” artist in a letter to Émile Bernard. It was this selfconfidence that became his greatest asset during his formation as an artist in the
1880’s; it propeled his development as a painter.
often refer to a male subject for the critical part of my study, and to both male and female subjects
for the positive part. In this way, I hope my dissertation will further the work of reparation.
26
2.2 Reflections on Identity
Four of Gauguin’s self-portraits that help us distinguish between his Romantic
and “religious” impulses were painted within the time-span of approximately two years
at the end of his formative period as a painter in the 1880’s. They are: Self-Portrait with
Portrait of Émile Bernard, Les Misérables (– a l’ami Vincent) (1888), Self-Portrait with
Halo (1889), Christ in the Garden of Olives (1889), and Self-Portrait with Yellow Christ
(1889-90). Taken together, they appear to be an intense meditation on the spiritual
possibilities of art making.
Gauguin’s excursions to Pont-Aven in 1888-89 mark a turning point for his
art. Brittany seems to have fulfilled his appetite for a rich artistic environment, and
made him anxious for an even greater kind: in his letters written in the following years,
he would repeatedly speak of his desire to leave Europe for more distant shores
(Thomson, 1993, p. 82). These excursions away from Paris come a little more than five
years after he left his job at the stock market. During that time, an economic
depression made it difficult to sell artwork or find part-time work in Paris, and
Gauguin was often unemployed and living in severe poverty. His son Clovis often
resided with him in Paris, and he was still emotionally and partly financially bound to
his distant wife and children. In short, poverty concretized his devotion to art like
Pissarro before him, but also severely inhibited his ability to focus on painting. In a
notebook for his daughter Aline, he says of poverty:
27
What is terrible, is that it prevents one working and prevents the development
of one’s intellectual faculties… It is true, on the other hand, that suffering
sharpens one’s genius. (cited in Perruchot, 1963, p. 133)
Indeed, it was true that on the heels of the flourishing art of Impressionism in
France, a community of artists considered Gauguin’s art innovative. They fit the image
of a cult to Gauguin’s genius. Pont-Aven would afford him a new opportunity to
concentrate on painting, as well as a space to cultivate his sensibilities under the
scrutiny of the group of artists who lived and worked there. Thriving as the center of
attention, he writes Mette in a letter, “I am respected as the best painter in PontAven… Everyone discusses my advice” (cited in Perruchot, 1963, p. 126). He enjoyed
the position of leadership he affected: “this was all part of a new character he was
creating for himself in the atmosphere of respect, indeed of fear, which now
surrounded him” (p. 127). His influence over this group emphasizes their mutual
belief in art as a vehicle for a spiritual quest—a professed metaphysical aim of
Gauguin’s art.
Self-Portrait with Portrait of Émile Bernard (Figure 1) is a work conceived with
a purpose: it was made for Vincent Van Gogh who was in Arles at the time. Thus, it is
intended to portray Gauguin’s self-image to his friend and fellow painter. But the
simple, side-view of Émile Bernard in its right-hand corner—a large, incongruous
element—brings our attention to a telling story surrounding the painting’s creation. It
is included as a compromise, as originally Bernard and Gauguin were to paint each
other, but this was ultimately not possible: Bernard was too intimidated to paint
Gauguin, and Gauguin was not really interested in painting Bernard (Mittelstädt, 1968,
28
p. 11). They agreed to include an image of the other in their own self-portrait. In this
way, its presence in Gauguin’s self-portrait came about because of his professional
relationship with Bernard. That Bernard is rendered only as an outlined image, as if
listening to a sermon, is telling. Their relationship, well illustrated by the painting’s
symbolism, is a good example of the type that fed Gauguin’s self-understanding as a
spiritual leader. “[Gauguin’s] fecundity and creative power amazed Bernard”
(Perruchot, 1963, p. 155) who was much younger (in his early twenties) than the forty
year-old Gauguin.
Figure 1. Paul Gauguin, Self-Portrait with Portrait of Émile Bernard, 1888.
29
In a letter to Schuffenecker (October 8th, 1888), Gauguin says of this selfportrait, “I believe it is one of my best paintings” (cited in Mittelstädt, 1968, p. 55). In a
letter the following week (October 18th), he responds to Schuffenecker’s conservative
response:
What do you mean when you talk about my terrifying mysticism? Be an
Impressionist all the way and don’t let anything frighten you! Of course that
appealing path is full of dangers, and so far I have only just begun to follow it,
but as a matter of fact it suits my true being, and you must always go where
your temperament takes you. (cited in Guérin, 1978, p. 25)
The painting depicts him as the character Jean Valjean from Les Misérables, and
therefore, he likens himself—and, by extension, the community of artists with whom
he identifies—to a persecuted criminal (Theodore Reff, personal communication, April
10, 2002). This worries Van Gogh, who writes back to Gauguin in a letter “this must
not go on” (Mittelstädt, 1968, p. 5). Along with Van Gogh, we understand this image
as depicting Gauguin’s perception of himself as a social outcast—an outsider who
perseveres against the social pressures of mainstream society. It is an image that
pleases Gauguin. He portrays himself with a confident, if somewhat forlorn expression.
The bold yellow-orange background and floral details representative of the Symbolist
style give us insight into the emotional content, and it is better evidence of Gauguin’s
confident attitude about his life as an artist rather than the brooding meditation that
Van Gogh perceives.
Self-Portrait with Halo (Figure 2) adds to our understanding of Gauguin’s selfperception. Here, Gauguin creates a very different kind of image, and we have to
speculate about his purpose(s). Again he makes use of ornamental details to situate his
30
portrait in an abstract environment, but now he foregrounds an even more prominent
representation of a serpent. With the halo above his head, this image has been
understood to show Gauguin, ironically, as a “synthetistic” saint (Mittelstädt, 1968, p.
59). He was experimenting with different techniques during this period, and he
identified with the goals of the Symbolists, as demonstrated by his lithograph of Jean
Moréas (Be a Symbolist – Jean Moréas) he made in 1891. He uses bold, uniform colors
and invented imagery to describe his inner life, while outwardly comparing his life to
that of a saint contemplating a serpent—an image that is surprisingly similar in tone to
the image of Gauguin behind the mask of Jean Valjean. It is also proposed that this is a
satirical representation of himself as Christ (the physical similarity being noticed by his
fellow painters in Brittany) (Mittelstädt, 1968, p. 59), and though this is based only on
the presence of biblical imagery, it does gesture toward his subsequent identification
with Christ in other paintings. At least, it situates this image in a dialectic of selfimagery: its immediate reception and surrounding dialogue is evidence of Gauguin’s
interest in the nature of artistic consciousness. He seems to ask, “Is the artist a saint?”
31
Figure 2. Paul Gauguin, Self-Portrait with Halo, 1889.
Self-Portrait with Yellow Christ (Figure 3) appears to us as a kind of protopsychoanalytic self-portrait, and it helps us to understand Gauguin’s resolution to this
conflict between strikingly different identities. The image captures the artist affecting a
reflective demeanor; he looks just beyond us, filling the space with a quiet, distant
feeling. He is about to speak. Is he addressing us? He is positioned between objects of
his own making: a painting, Yellow Christ (1888), and an earthenware jug, Jug in the
32
shape of a Grotesque Head (Self-portrait) (1889). The painting’s reversed image leads
us to believe that Gauguin is using a mirror to observe this scene, and he appears to be
looking back over his shoulder at it. In this reflection, he is turned toward the jug
conjoined with his face on the picture plane, creating a kind of double image: a looming
orange mask that holds our gaze as it contrasts with his cool blue sweater. There is
almost no detail in the surrounding space to suggest a setting, with the exception of
the landscape in Yellow Christ. The composition is full of faces—Gauguin surrounded
by his self-portraiture.
Figure 3. Paul Gauguin, Self-Portrait with Yellow Christ, 1889.
33
Another painting from 1889 makes the inclusion of the image of Yellow Christ
more complex. Christ in the Garden of Olives (Figure 4) appears to be a self-portrait as
well: the image of Christ has the characteristic angular nose we attribute to Gauguin
(Theodore Reff, personal communication, April 10, 2002). The fact that these
paintings are made in the same year makes a conjecture about the thematic continuity
of his self-identification as Christ viable—the biblical passage’s narrative becomes a
telling element in his self-portraiture. Christ in the Garden of Olives depicts Christ in a
moment of repose. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke describe the significance
of Christ’s presence in the Garden of Olives. After supper (Christ’s last), Jesus and his
disciples went to the Garden of Olives to rest. With knowledge of his pending arrest
and crucifixion, Jesus went farther into the Garden, alone, to pray. He kneeled down on
the ground and prayed, “’Father, if you are willing, take this cup of suffering away from
me. But do what you want, not what I want’” (Luke 22:42). He prayed three times
during the night, aware of the events to come. Thus, the image of Christ in this
context portrays a recognition and overcoming of suffering. Gauguin clearly identified
with this gesture: he imagines Jesus with his back turned to his friends, slightly askew
at the edge of the picture as if confronted by an insurmountable boundary. His limp
hands suggest introspection and his partly opened, occidental eyes seem to register an
omniscient awareness of the circumstances.
34
Figure 4. Paul Gauguin, Christ in the Garden of Olives, 1889.
There may be multiple kinds of identification at work, but Gauguin’s
identification with Christ’s suffering parallels the emotional testimony of his letters.
The poverty and illness he endured throughout the 1880’s would not be so soon
forgotten. Looking back on this period later in life, he would write in a letter to his
friend William Mollard, “Everything has always turned against me” (cited in
Mittelstädt, 1968, p. 31).
The significance of Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Olives (see above) suggests
that Gauguin was also interested in the possibility that one’s suffering is in the hands
35
of fate, and not a matter of choice. Christ’s prayer is an allegory about subordinating
one’s self to fate, so Christ becomes a vehicle for Gauguin’s Romantic belief that he is
an artist by nature, and not necessarily by his own making; Christ in the Garden of
Olives shows us that Gauguin saw his work as an artist on par with Christ’s own
acceptance. It is a further step to say that the image of Yellow Christ follows this selfidentification, but the persistence of this imagery in his artworks points in this
direction.
2.3 Portrait of a Genius
When interpreting Yellow Christ’s presence in the self-portrait, we should
consider a range of possible meanings from the matter of contemplation about one’s
self to a more immediate religious significance. The image of Christ on the cross, as an
iconic symbol of Christianity, could reflect Gauguin’s concern with religion in general,
or his own religious practice in particular. Either way it is unlikely, since we know he
criticized Christianity for destroying “Man’s faith in himself and in the beauty of
primitive instincts, until [the instincts] became a Myth” (Mittelstädt (1968), p. 11).
Furthermore, it is not just any image of Christ he includes in his self-portrait, but an
image of his own making – the same can be said for the earthenware jug—a fact that
supports the argument that Self Portrait with Yellow Christ is a meditation on art
making. As such, we see it as a peculiar kind of meditation: a psychological comparison
between three kinds of selves. For brevity’s sake, I will discuss these selves in terms of
36
Freudian psychoanalysis, but this is not meant to be a Freudian interpretation of
Gauguin’s work. Here, these terms serve as a quick way to disambiguate three
psychological functions. As a symbol of the influence of culture, Yellow Christ appears
to symbolically represent the superego; the primitive jug can be seen as the id; and the
literal image of the artist appears as the ego. Thus, each element in Gauguin’s threepart self-portrait tells us something different about the artist, adding to our
understanding of the whole.
The function of the superego is to govern the ego in accordance with
internalized standards of authority. It is significant that Gauguin included the portrait
of Yellow Christ and not Christ in the Garden of Olives because the immediate
association with Gauguin is disrupted. Here, Christ represents tradition, becoming a
sort of “alternate self” that Gauguin sees as a looming figure of suffering. Christ does
not literally represent what we would understand to be Gauguin’s superego, yet
Gauguin distances himself symbolically from that inherited internalized authority.
Christ no longer represents Gauguin’s suffering as he did in the Garden; Christ is an
external representation of submission to society’s ideals. This painting represents one
way of being an artist. We can compare this position with the overt reverence that
many of Gauguin’s contemporaries had for tradition—even in the tradition of
Impressionism.
In the opposite corner, the jug represents a different kind of artist. As the id,
the jug represents Gauguin’s instinctual drives; it is Gauguin’s “savage” self. He takes
pride in this identity. He traveled to Panama and Martinique in 1887 “in order to live
37
there like a savage” (Mittelstädt, 1968, p. 9), and apparently to revitalize the “Indian”
part of him that he once understood as a young child living in Lima, Peru. 11 The jug is
a primitive self-portrait molded out of coarse material, giving form to a developing
theme of his work: Gauguin’s belief that “Man and Nature, in their original,
unadulterated state should be a revelation of Harmony and Beauty” (cited in
Mittelstädt, 1968, p. 9). Seeking this innocence that he believed existed in the South
Seas,12 he traveled to Tahiti for the first time in 1891. In the summer of 1895, he
returned to Tahiti to live there as a painter until his death. The jug represents this
choice and its consequences.
In seeking pleasure above all else, the id must be restrained by the ego. Thus,
Gauguin’s literal image is the self that experiences the tension between the id and
superego—a self that perceives, thinks, and takes action. This is the image of Gauguin
deciding how to be in the world. Self-Portrait with Yellow Christ is a depiction of a man
who believes he is an artist by nature. He is turned away from tradition; he is closer to
his savage self. Yet, he remains composed and reflective. He is a skeptic—a bourgeois
man in a blue sweater sitting on a precipice between two worlds. In June 1889, he
writes to Mette from Le Pouldu, “What concerns me is art, it is my capital, my
children’s future, the honor of the name I have given them… I live like a peasant, and
11
Although Gauguin takes pride in the fraction of his heritage that is Peruvian, he did not live
anything like a savage during his stay in Peru. For more on this, see Perruchot (1963) for a
description of his day-to-day habits.
12
Tahiti was not the “uncivilized” place he imagined, and already in 1891 it was becoming
economically and politically assimilated into “modern” culture. Gauguin seems to have been
initially persuaded of its innocence by a travel brochure. See Perruchot (1963), p. 195.
38
am known as a savage” (cited in Guérin, 1978, p. 27). The image of the savage makes
sense out of his life. His spiritual quest—as a criminal, as a saint, or as Jesus Christ—is
sublimated into his work as an artist. To paraphrase his own description of his spiritual
quest: his religion is instinct reigned in by reason. Christ has been flattened out and
transformed into a stage prop—the background that sets the artist’s moral compass in
accordance with a deep solipsism. The foregrounded image of the artist is a satirical
portrait of mediocrity for an audience of admirers, and the symbolism of the painting
exposes the insincerity of his humility.
2.4 Summary
These portraits of Gauguin’s life serve as rich examples of the internal
manifestation of a conception of genius. While artists may conceive of themselves as
geniuses to some degree, we see in Gauguin’s example the consequences of an extreme
case. The concept is at work in his self-understanding, distorting religiosity, and
enacting its potential as a comprehensive good—a good that aligns all other aspects of
one’s life toward its purpose. This example helps us pose new questions about the
potential and effect of the concept of genius and its relation to moral excellence. What
kind of relationships should artists cultivate? Is it possible to embark on a mythic quest
if one’s life is directed by a multitude of goods (e.g., not only as a practitioner of the
arts, but as a member of a family, a citizen of democracy, etc.)? How would we evaluate
that kind of life? Our reception of the concept of genius makes us sensitive to the
39
problem of sustaining and challenging tradition in the arts, but Gauguin’s life makes
us wary of the potential consequences of this work. In his self-portraits, instead of a
reflective figure, we see a tragic mirror image of our artistic selves, for who among us
does not envy Gauguin’s conviction that painting constitutes one’s salvation?
3. A Subject of Moral Philosophy
There are two meanings I extract from Gauguin’s case. As I have argued, it is
both the case that a conception of genius can deeply affect an artist’s life, and that an
artist can be morally excellent without being “good.” This recasting of morality follows
from a dissatisfaction with the myopic view of morality that leaves us with saintliness, a
way of life which few of us would intentionally adopt. Lauding Gauguin as morally
excellent is a long way from rejecting saintliness as an ideal, but it does follow logically
from the artist’s perspective and ultimately satisfies Wolf’s call for a moral theory that
meshes with common sense.
The meaning of excellence in art practice, and how we consider artists apart
from their art, is not simple. It is not the same thing to speak of a moral saint and an
artistic genius as good. Gauguin does not have to be generous, charitable, or even
considered an excellent artist to be a good husband, father, or French citizen. But I am
now claiming, by virtue of my reading of Wolf’s expansionist argument, that Gauguin
should be considered morally admirable. That is, taking account of an artist’s behavior
40
beyond his ability, achievement, and success at making art need not be systematically
integrated into moral evaluation—for the artist stakes his identity in art, and art
practice is a well-nested social sphere.13
This argument puts my critique of genius in a richer context. A key premise of
my main argument—that the concept of genius plays a key role in artists’ ability to
become artists, remain artists, and thrive as artists—is not uncontroversial. But I will
further claim that an artist’s failure to understand the concept and actively overcome
its problems counts as a moral failure. To wit, to claim it is simply “a failure” carries
much less force, and is an egregiously ahistorical and inhuman utterance. The example
of Gauguin and his art suggests how genius can be an influential concept, and why a
critique of genius is relevant for art education. For Gauguin, a concept of genius was
intertwined with identity because he was recognized as a great painter during his life
(or simply arrogant enough to believe it true, or act as if it were). Indeed, he may have
acted no differently if the concept of genius had not been prevalent in France during
his life. But it is hard to imagine nineteenth century France—or any other recent time
and place in western culture—without a similar fascination with excellence. Gauguin
was blessed and cursed with—or simply saddled with—the problem of integrating a
notion of artistic excellence into his art practice.
13
According to Blacker’s (1999) political philosophy, art practice is a social “sphere.” This is a helpful
metaphor and theory for conceiving of the social legitimacy of art practices. See Blacker (1999),
especially his discussion of “spherical autonomy” (pp. 189-199). Blacker argues that the democratic
notion of complex equality must be vetted for a relationship to pluralism. In doing so, he discusses
how “intra-spherical” and “extra-spherical” pressures regulate the autonomy of spheres. For a
sphere to be “well-nested” means it gains authority through extra-spherical relationships.
41
4. Conclusion
For those artists who are not publicly recognized, the problem for art practice is
a matter of coping with notions of artistic excellence. Such reconciliation is in itself
unlikely to propel the kind of artistic production John Dewey will be shown to have in
mind below in Chapter II, Section 3.4—art making as a social, communicative activity.
We are likely to leave the work of art making for a lucky-someone-else to do. But as
Gauguin’s story makes clear, situating one’s self at the more favorable end of a
spectrum of excellence is not only motivational, but also potentially educative in a sense
of which Dewey would approve. Regardless of Gauguin’s anti-social tendencies, his
spiritual quest led him to produce meaningful art that continues to garner an audience.
In this way, an orientation toward excellence seems to partake in social life. That his
spiritual quest coincided with external recognition of genius complicates the
philosophical picture, as the matter of identity adds another layer of meaning to stories
about artists and their work.
There are objections to such a community-minded approach to artistic
excellence, but they are not strong. For example, Zangwill (1999) argues that an
audience is not an essential aspect of art, as his interest lies to the side of the first
person experience. He says that “any plausible theory must involve some reference to
an artist’s intention” (Zangwill, 1999, p. 315). This allows him to discard “pure”
audience theories that abuse an artist/audience distinction securing our notion of the
42
difference between art and non-art in the first place. So his rejection of audience-based
theories of art must be seen in light of his larger project of advancing artist-based
theories that promote the perspective of the artist at the cost of devaluing the ideal of
community. His definition of art is, therefore, too narrow for the purposes of art
education. Educators are presumably interested in the kind of art that is seen by an
audience because they are interested in opportunities for individuals to engage in
dialogues that potentially lead to “new understandings.”
Corroboration of one’s opinion about genius is expected, and perhaps necessary.
Ideally, opinions about genius would be unanimous, but this is seldomly the case.
Thus, when it comes to one’s opinion of one’s self, the judgment that “I am a genius”
should probably not be taken at face value. Circumstances are never so simple that
one’s excellence could be rightly judged this way, as it is not clear that proclaiming one’s
self a genius would be meaningful without substantial support from an audience. The
engine of a “first person” perspective of genius is, therefore, a “third person”
perspective—an external concept of genius. I return to this predicament in Chapter IV
where I discuss the growing body of psychological literature on the identification of
character traits and its meaning for the critique of genius from the perspective of art
education. What is needed prior to further scrutiny of the concept of genius is a better
articulated and bounded inquiry. Chapters II and III identify characteristics of art
education that frame my critique of genius, and outline a methodological strategy for
locating subordination as a vital response to genius.
43
II–ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENT
1. An Artist’s Narrative Quest
A conception of artistic genius, complicated by the experience of making art in a
complex social world, was antagonistic to my education as an artist. Skepticism shortcircuited my artistic identity and my experience of artistic influence; it was, for me at
least, a symptom of my under ripened conception of art practice. As an art student, I
wondered, “Do I have qualities that make me a genius?” Would I have been able to
detect them even if I did? It seems reasonable to look at one’s art for evidence of genius,
but can one rightly detect it this way? Can one be a good judge of one’s own work? (Can
others?) Even if I believe I am a genius, can I explain or justify this belief? What
difference would it make?
I first encountered Alasdair MacIntyre’s moral philosophy during a vocational
crisis. I wanted to be an artist, a storyteller, a philosopher, and a teacher all at once.
Before entering graduate school to study the history of education, I attempted to wear
all these hats as a filmmaker in Hollywood, California. I returned to school after failing
to achieve success in all these ways and failing to choose one direction over another. It
44
struck me that my formal education, which had come to an end upon graduation from
Dartmouth College only a year earlier, was the closest thing I knew to a place where one
could do this kind of choosing.
As an undergraduate, I majored in Studio Art—a course of study based on
traditional visual art forms. This led to my interest in filmmaking and my eventual
decision to travel westward. One year later, though my experience in Hollywood was
rewarding, my interests continued to grow and broaden, and I wondered if I had made a
good vocational decision. I recognized my desire to tell stories as a desire to educate.
That is, the more I learned about filmmaking, the more I wanted to understand the
features of social life that caused me to want to tell stories that were not only
entertaining, but important. I was writing a screenplay at the time, and my mantra was
a customary one: “write what you know.” At that time, what I believed I knew most
about was my experience of education, but I needed to know more to tell a story.
I moved back east, and, with the intention of learning more about education, I
began taking courses at Teachers College, the graduate school of education at
Columbia University in New York City. I wanted to better understand education, its
various aims and structures, and how they are achieved (or who or what prevented
such achievement). Reflecting on the scope of my studio education, I also wondered
how the form of my education influenced my vocational decisions. Beyond the vaguely
articulated goals of liberal education and the outward goals of art making (e.g., filling
space with well-designed and attractive materials), I wondered what the other
dimensions of the studio classroom might be, and how I was shaped by the curriculum.
45
I was also aware of the odd development of choosing to be a student once again, when
for almost twenty years I had been a student with seemingly little choice in the matter.
Back in school, I once again found philosophy compelling. As an
undergraduate, I had taken several philosophy courses, from logic to literary theory,
and my closest friends were philosophy majors who would go on to graduate programs
in philosophy and join a rigorous academic community of professional philosophers.
(While I enjoyed philosophical discussions, my friends were more consistently
interested in rigorously analyzing and constructing arguments.) My first two classes at
Teachers College were introductory courses, “Philosophies of Education” and “The
History of American Education.” The following semester I took two more philosophy
courses and subsequently became a Master’s student in the Philosophy and Education
Program. This was the term I read After Virtue (MacIntyre, 1984).
1.1 The Turn to Philosophy
As many parts of his theory resonated with my experience as a student,
MacIntyre’s (1984) account of ethics in After Virtue became a framework for my
reflection on education. Practices, narrative quests, and moral traditions are three
registers of moral life, he argues, that orient individuals and communities toward
46
“virtue” and “the good.” 14 This view, an outgrowth of Aristotle’s theory of virtue, was a
compelling account of what I understood to be the liberal aim of education—it made
sense of education in the terms of the Socratic quest for living a good life (Aristotle,
2000, pp. vii-x). MacIntyre’s tripartite theory of moral life helped me think about many
aspects of education broadly, and it provided traction for reflecting about and
remembering specific educational experiences.
Between my experience as an art student and my goal of choosing a vocational
direction, MacIntyre’s understanding of the role of practices in a person’s life—a focal
point of After Virtue—was an important touchstone. Practices, which for MacIntyre
are sufficiently complex, socially established activities, involve a similarly complex
relationship between individuals and a community (MacIntyre, 1984, p. 187). For
example, it is in and through practices, MacIntyre says, that we partly come to know
the virtues that are, in turn, instrumental in choosing how we live. I asked myself as I
read: Do I have this kind of relationship to a community? What would taking this view
seriously mean for how I work as an artist, philosopher, or teacher?
MacIntyre’s special definition of a practice prompted me to examine my past
relationship to the artworld, where my interest in painting developed alongside my
familiarization with art history. As I first worked with oil paint as a sophomore in
14
Moral traditions, theorized by MacIntyre as one dimension of moral life that extends the human
possibilities of meaning making, are established by communities that value and sustain a
relationship to a practice over time. Narrative quests are the individual experiences of meaningseeking people. I will discuss all three parts of MacIntyre’s moral equation at length below in
Chapter II, Section 2.
47
college, I was attracted to colorful abstractions and minimal representation—the kind
of imagery in Jim Dine or Richard Diebenkorn’s oeuvre. I discovered (and was
introduced to) other twentieth century Americans such as Fairfield Porter and Philip
Guston, and their contemporaries and predecessors. The community of painters I
came to know was complex and intriguing—the actual (and imagined) connections and
influences were hard to work out. But it was also clear that understanding these
connections was a unique task compared to other artistic responses, and I came to
appreciate that the historian’s work was different than the artist’s.
Artists are often saddled with the historian’s task, however, as understanding
history is one method by which artists may find meaning in art. My influences as a
painter were heaped together, and to make matters somewhat more complicated, only
some of those influences were other painters and/or their work (for example, Carl
Sagan’s televised Cosmos was, among other poetic and scientific creations, an
inspiration for my work in the studio). Yet I was never specifically trained how to use,
order, or conceptualize my influences. Even within the realm of “art history” my
interests were diverse: I learned about thirteenth-century painting in Italy, the
Renaissance, Modernism, Picasso, Impressionism, the tradition of landscape painting,
realism, Abstract Expressionism, and more—I learned so much about tradition that it
was hard to make sense of it. It was, however, the presence of these historical
influences that MacIntyre’s concept of practice touched upon.
Studying education in graduate school, trying once again to return to the
studio, I asked myself, “Was my undergraduate education good enough?” My work in
48
painting continued to be about exploring imagery, feelings, ideas, values, and beliefs.
My interest in painting existed somewhat prior to my work in film, so I wondered: was
there simply a constellation of mitigating factors that conspired to derail my work as a
painter and launch my career in filmmaking? Or was my education wanting for
something it should not have lacked? As an undergraduate I was exposed to a variety of
art practices and many dimensions of art practice, but after a couple years and a dozen
classes, my interest in drawing and painting waned. Learning to paint once again as a
graduate student, I tried to understand MacIntyre’s perspective on the onset of
education. Above all, perhaps, my return to the studio was motivated by an emergent
sense of myself as an artist.
As I will discuss below in Section 2, MacIntyre’s moral theory invokes a very
different sense of tradition than the sense that is often discussed in the artworld. For
many artists, there is little difference between having (and making known) one’s
influences and being a “traditionalist.” Being beholden to tradition is not seen as a
desirable disposition, and this makes tending to one’s influences all the more difficult
when establishing one’s contributions to the artworld as unique is understood as
paramount. Conceiving of tradition as an ongoing project, however, casts influences in
a better light—especially when those influences are other artists’ artworks. One’s
influences turn out to be interpretive frameworks through which the meaning of one’s
artworks may be more fully disclosed. Yet the sense that an artist should not be limited
by the achievements of the past is undeniably reasonable. For an artist, therefore,
accepting that both one’s influences and one’s artworks are aspects of tradition can be
49
understood a turn to philosophy, and this was a consequence of my encounter with
After Virtue. Yet this begs the question of what it means to conceive of the artist-cumtraditionalist as an excellent artist, and how one should conceive of tradition as a
complex negotiation of the past and present is a question put forward here alongside
the critique of the concept of genius.
1.2 An Early Hypothesis
The details of my past education were on my mind as I began to re-examine my
work as a painter.15 Having at least developed a new understanding of my former self as
a practitioner who had ceased to strive for excellence, I began examining why I lost
interest in (or did not cultivate interest in) painting while I was an undergraduate. It
was impossible, at first, to account for all the possible variables embedded in the past.
But it was clear that MacIntyre’s theory of the interconnectedness of three registers of
moral life, however vaguely understood by me at the time, re-established my sense that
art practice was an important part of my life and worth pursuing. After a critical
engagement with a theory of “educational goods,” I was able to identify and recall
influences on my vocational decisions, and—perhaps inevitably—a dominant line of
thought about my past experience emerged.
15
I suspect a notion of “individuality” plays a large role in my sense of self. For more on the role of
individuality in moral life, see Part I, Identity and the Good, in Taylor (1989).
50
I realized that my life as a painter was, at pivotal moments, distinguished by my
opinion of my art teachers (my college professors). This simple insight became an
important thread in my attempt to understand my actions, both past and present. Even
then I knew that my teachers were important to my realization that education could
sharpen my talents, but my opinions of them were varied, and often negative. The
reasons for this are equally vague and complex, but one aspect still stands out to me
today. I wanted my teachers to anchor my work and life to a meaningful tradition, but
this never came to pass. My relationships with them were strangely impersonal. I
doubt, for example, they would have guessed that I chose to major in art largely
because I felt a strong sense of kinship with them. But then, I never told them. I guess
I just expected them to know.
My education also included relationships with art students, but I believe my
relationships with my teachers had the greatest lasting effect on my art practice. I was
indifferent to many of my teachers, and merely plodded through their curriculum and
my time in the studio. But I felt, and continue to feel, particularly indebted to a few, and
especially to one teacher for her insightful and challenging feedback on my drawings
and paintings. She knew when and how to push me to try new ideas and experiment
with new techniques—her aesthetic style was well suited to my interests. Other
teachers helped me in this and other ways, although less often and, I feel, with less
care. But even my relationship with this teacher never deepened beyond the ordinary
routines of the classroom. I believed her judgment was sound—judgments that often
came in the form of comments about my work, comments such as “some yellow would
51
look good there” and “ this is your best drawing”—but it was not enough. I could not
detect any qualities in myself that secured my confidence that my contributions to the
artworld would ever be appreciated, and I was less motivated to make art.16
As my Teachers College Master’s Thesis explored, MacIntyre argues that
subordination is a key moment in practices and that subordination to other
practitioners is an essential condition of achieving excellence in a practice (Hughes,
2002). Several questions are foregrounded by this study and further reflection on my
undergraduate experience. Did I fail to adequately subordinate myself to other
practitioners? With my favorite teacher, had I begun down a path of subordination, but
failed to seriously attempt to understand her practice? She never explicitly helped me
with regard to this work. Was I inattentive to the excellence of her practices? Can one
bypass a deep experience of subordination and still achieve excellence in a practice? Did
I act as if one could? MacIntyre’s account of subordination implies that practitioners’
attachment to a practice can deepen over time, but armed only with his observation
that the result of subordination is that we defer to others’ judgments about the
internal goods of a practice (MacIntyre, 1984, pp. 190-192), it is unclear what else
subordination entails. My Master’s Thesis allowed me pose these questions about my
art practice, and led me to believe that answers could be sought by considering the
nature of excellence—where ethics gathers a broader picture of human behavior.
16
More specifically, I suspected my art would not be rightly appreciated. I remain deeply skeptical of
others’ opinions of my work, but I am painting my past self in too garish a light. The more sober way
to put this is to say that I was more motivated when my teachers and other artists recognized my
“talent.”
52
As an explanation of excellence, MacIntyre argues there is a “logical structure”
of the interconnectedness of the three registers of moral life he identifies. For example,
he claims that the experience of excellence in practices is prior to the experience of
excellence in moral traditions (MacIntyre, 1984, p. 189), and perhaps he is interested
here in a defending an Aristotelian conception of virtue as part of a comprehensive
moral theory. Nevertheless, his argument further complicates the matter of the
achievement of excellence by not expanding the matter of subordination. What is
needed as a corrective here is a philosophical perspective that is interested in practice. A
more complex understanding of the process of entering into practices is needed,
therefore, to better conceive of a “MacIntyrian” theory of education.
1.3 The Matter of Trust
I did not fully develop as an artist at Dartmouth College. I demonstrated artful
talents and good habits in my studio classes, I was recognized by my teachers as a
promising art student, but I never wanted to be considered an artist by anyone outside
the classroom. When I graduated, I was not adequately prepared to join a larger
community of artists, and I abandoned painting in favor of filmmaking. I returned to
the studio in graduate school after developing a conception of the possible richness of
studio practice to which I may have never attended adequately. My understanding of
educational relationships according to MacIntyre’s articulation of practices thereby
sharpened my interest in other artists and their work, and it also had the effect of
53
strengthening my rationale for being an artist by undercutting my skepticism about my
own artistic potential. I could no longer use the thinly disguised, real question posed as
a half-hearted excuse, “What do painters really do, anyway?”
I developed a new appreciation for many respected artists, but I also cultivated a
new respect for all artists who work within a tradition. With this renewed commitment
to the arts, one aspect that continues to interest me most about the social milieu in
which I find myself situated are the ways of which some artists are considered to be
eminent, and how this privileging often trades on the notion of artistic genius. How do
practitioners who are not recognized as geniuses remain reconciled with this reality? It
is not just a problem for practitioners in general, but for teachers and students. I
wonder, for example, how eminence shapes practitioners’ self-perceptions as well as
perceptions of education.
Why would a student want to learn from anyone other than a genius?
Misunderstanding the nature of artistic genius may have been a major obstacle in my
relationships with my art teachers—perhaps even a central feature of my past
difficulties as an artist. For artists, the problem of genius stands at the intersection of
practices, narrative quests, and moral traditions. Posed as an educational problem,
therefore, genius can be related to a complex web of relationships, attitudes, and
actions. For example, it may influence how one experiences subordination, and it is this
matter that continues to resonate with me as I struggle to understand what it would
mean to live as an artist. If one accepts the notion of genius as eminence, then one
likely accepts that there are possibilities for subordination that meet MacIntyre’s claim
54
that judgments are sometimes deferred to other practitioners. But why would a
practitioner defer his judgment, and about what matter? And if he does, would he not
prefer to defer his judgment to someone he regards as a genius? This gestures toward
a problem for teachers: whether or not genius is actually a fact of nature, it may change
the nature of educational relationships. Alternately, one may believe there is no such
thing as genius, in which case there may be some other feature or features of practice
that warrants subordination. These features must come with their own reassurances
that the person who defers his judgment is in good hands, and the same is true of the
case with genius: there is an instantiation of trust.17
Philosophy helped me overcome my earlier experience of art education and
adopt a rationale for making art as an adult. Exploring genius as an extreme case of
excellence in the arts may shed light on the role of subordination in practices and
render a salient picture of the role of trust in education. An expanded account of
subordination offers insight about the essential qualities of a MacIntyrian experience of
excellence, and a related theory of education may be applied in educative communities.
A closer look at subordination may offer the notion of genius back to artists in a new,
and more truthful way.
17
For more on the issue of “trust” from the perspective of social psychology, see Good (1988).
55
1.4 Summary
It is understating the case to say that art practices draw on a rich range of ideas,
processes, and institutions. These sources are comprised of entities that partake of the
history of the arts, and also those associated with the arts for the first time. Today,
there is nothing common to all art; “art” means different things at different times in
different places. And where art goes, art education follows. The continuing ideal of
Modernism, however, means that there is a widespread hope of unity, and a complex
network of people, conversations, and ideas that hang together as the basis of the
philosophy of art. In the spirit of this unity, but not due to its perceived imminence, we
should strive to understand the warp and weft of our social fabric.
The story of my own difficulties with subordination make the implications for
education clearer, and also demonstrates why I undertake the inquiry as a moral one.
Without the larger frame of morality, the problem of defining genius collapses into a
merely historical task. This task must still be undertaken, but personal experience
guides it. The project cannot solely consist in this work (even if one were to exhaust
completely the historical possibilities, which will not be accomplished here), because it
calls for interpretation through a philosophical lens. “Morality” captures the richness
and complexity of social, psychological, and historical forces.
My inquiry will be a sustained analysis of minor features of MacIntyre’s theory,
with implications for the greater whole. The philosophical problem of genius (to be
discussed in depth in Chapter III) teases out aspects of MacIntyre’s theory that may
56
otherwise be overlooked, and weaves a significantly more complex picture of art
practices in “good working order” that I hope offers new insight into education. In the
following section I turn to MacIntyre’s philosophy to make clear how his theory of
virtue serves as a framework for my critique of genius, and sets aside those aspects of
his work in which I am less expert.
2. Elaboration of MacIntyre’s Project
As MacIntyre sets out to secure a foundation from which to generate social
criticism in what is considered his mature work (Murphy, 2003)—of which After
Virtue is the inaugural book. In this work, he takes on board multiple philosophical
projects, not the least of which is a reformulation of Aristotelian ethics, and a central
part of this project is recasting the concept of virtue in light of all the ethical and metaethical theory since ancient times, as well as in consideration of other cultures and
their histories. To be sure, this is no small project, and MacIntyre insists that we read
his account of virtue as tentative and incomplete (MacIntyre, 1984, p. 271).18
In MacIntyre’s terms, the “moral nature” of genius can be understood as a set of
problems and relationships he aims to define in general with his description of virtue
as the centerpiece of moral life. The problem with applying virtue theory to art practice,
18
MacIntyre’s work is subject to much criticism. See, for example, After MacIntyre (Horton & Mendus,
1994).
57
however, is twofold: 1) MacIntyre never attempts to apply his theory to a specific
practice in great detail, and 2) it is unclear if his theory of virtue is sufficiently
consistent or descriptive to allow for such an application. It is important, therefore, to
understand the trade-off MacIntyre makes to generate a descriptive theory of moral life
rather than formulate a prescriptive theory.
To better define virtue, he identifies three major registers of the social life for
which an account must be given: practices, narrative quests, and moral traditions. Each
one of these matters becomes a focus for his future critics, as a failure to make sense of
any single register undermines, to a greater or lesser extent, the whole project. It is the
force (the ought) of morality that MacIntyre seeks to enlist as the voice of social
criticism. If these three registers cannot be seen as contributing to an ought (morality,
and therefore, an account of virtue), then by MacIntyre’s own reasoning there will be
insurmountable resistance to social criticism.
The methodological issue of developing a foundation for social criticism takes
on a central role in MacIntyre’s books Whose Justice? Which Rationality? and Three
Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry. He argues that a conception of “practical reason” can
be grounded in a “traditionalist” conception of knowledge that frames understanding as
an inheritance of inquiry. This, in turn, recasts philosophy as defined by tradition, and
he casts “analytic” moral philosophy per se as a peculiar remnant of a tradition that
includes the Enlightenment belief that methodology can stand outside of tradition.
That is, the conception of virtue that MacIntyre sets out to define is by definition an
articulation of a particular tradition that comes with an established set of questions and
58
problems that demand the attention of its practitioners. Some meta-ethicists reject this
claim on the grounds that there are universal moral principles, and believe that
disputes about morality can be settled.19 I find myself in the middle: on the side of the
traditionalist who acknowledges diversity, but with the hope that there are principles
(perhaps not rightly understood as ethical principles) that will allow for disputes to be
rationally settled.
Such diversity, if recognized, not only pushes back on MacIntyre’s philosophy,
but also the analytic tradition that arises in wake of the Enlightenment that posits an
ahistorical rationality (i.e., objectivity and universality). It is actually a much worse
problem for the former than for the latter. Analytic philosophy simply adopts a
Pragmatic temperament going forward (as it often has). Either philosophizing leads to
outcomes which we desire and of which we approve, or it does not (and there likely
exists a horizon beyond which we simply cannot accurately guess the outcomes one way
or other). Traditionalists, on the other hand, are stuck conceding that disagreements
are either not disagreements at all, or represent insurmountable difference. Alas, on
this view morality seems to once again be mired by the relativism MacIntyre seeks to
escape—this is the glass as half empty.
For the traditionalist, a world replete with competing traditions bodes very badly
indeed. For even if social criticism is leveled from within a tradition, it is unlikely to
19
I am not convinced MacIntyre’s Neo-Thomist tradition is preferable over a more fragmented
tradition that includes the Enlightenment conception of truth as objective and universal.
MacIntyre is opting out of continuing dialogues that at least have the potential to establish new
agreement about an ought, and therefore, agreement about the future.
59
find traction in the wider world without the accompaniment of an attractive
philosophy. Such a philosophy would, by appealing to persons in rival traditions, be
seen as successfully re-describing existent problems more powerfully. On the other
hand, in a world where philosophers of all kinds work to arrive at agreement from the
outset on matters thought to be inherently philosophical for one reason or another—
no matter how difficult and arduous the dialogue may be at times—the outcome at least
has the potential to correspond to matters “on the ground” and have a de facto appeal
to non-philosophers. This is the glass as half full.
2.1 Traditions and Anti-Traditions
Today, the matter of tradition is central to philosophers who attempt to
understand art. Though I will discuss tradition further in Chapter VI, I want to briefly
acknowledge the kinds of problems that arise when tradition is understood as a sideconstraint of inquiry. There are many traditions to choose from in the world, and this
may lead artists to feel a sense of rootlessness. As with the often-repeated mantra of
postmodernism, there is an underlying lack of awareness of the ongoing role of
tradition. Gyorgy (1999), a philosopher who shares this view, declares that the
contemporary artist dwells in a boundless state of possibility:
There are no longer any obstacles before anyone, no obligation to any school
behooves. Time no longer commands, it no longer prohibits, nor does it
recommend. There is no longer any kind of era, no longer any school, there is
no valid tradition, there is nothing but freedom. (p. 431)
60
This is an unbounded notion of art. Presumably Gyorgy comes to this
conclusion by following a narrative of contemporary art that combines ideas from
aesthetics, art criticism, and theory. Discussing and making art within institutions that
are beholden to the western tradition is, to be sure, a complex matter. In his article
“Between and After Essentialism and Institutionalism,” Gyorgy responds to Danto’s
(1984) thesis that the history of art has ended, and says the problem at hand is “the
possibility of discussing art, with the experience of contemporary art behind us, after
the end of art history” (Gyorgy, 1999, p. 421).
Arthur Danto (1992) has since made clear that the claim that art history has
ended does not mean that art making has ended. His claim pertained to the “Western”
tradition that twentieth century artists are said to have transcended under the banner
of postmodernism. Even so, the interests of art critics, historians, and theorists can be
seen emerging as new perspectives in dialogues about art after its so-called “end.”20
Gyorgy seems eager to cast contemporary artists as practitioners who work on the
cutting edge of theory, but, seeing artists as critics, historians, and theorists, he loses
sight of the artist as a maker of art.
In a sense, artists are free from tradition because “the institutions necessary for
the maintenance of the universalism of the essentialist theory of art [are] no longer
available” (Gyorgy, 1999, p. 429). For example, “classical categorization,” a conceptual
20
It is not that the transformation does not warrant a dramatic label, but that the label “the end” may
evoke a break from tradition that is not desired or even possible. It draws artists’ attention to a
philosophy of art at the cost of jeopardizing conceptions of praxis.
61
task of defining art in relation to other art, is one of these institutions. This is the
short list of dichotomies that were ready-at-hand to distinguish the capital “A” art of
art history from all other objects: high/low, European/non-European, artwork/artifact,
and so on. Cultural anthropology gave the artworld a new vocabulary for thinking
about how different communities represent culture, and this led to the
“’anthropologization’ of Western art . . . [where] the possibility of viewing our own
culture from the outside emerged” (Gyorgy, 1999, p. 430). This is the point at which
Danto argues that art making became about art theory, but it is also the moment when
art theorists divided along the line of “essentialists” and “institutionalists.” Essentialists
proceed by arguing that some intrinsic quality or qualities define art, and
institutionalists counter by arguing that art is defined by the people and institutions
that value it.
As the title of his essay suggests, Gyorgy says we have to go between
essentialism and institutionalism to understand the present condition of art. Following
Gadamer’s understanding of the subjectivization of aesthetics, he describes a turning
point in the Western tradition that bears out his thesis that art has been relegated to a
domain consisting mostly in personal truths and trivial entertainment. Gyorgy claims
this undesirable transformation was slow and misguided. The end result is a view of art
as evidence of cultural difference—“massive traffic has begun between anthropology
and art history” (Gyorgy, 1999, p. 427)—but art is no longer seen as a source of truth
as it was in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
62
Gyorgy seems to have missed an important lesson of his own story of the end of
art history when he says, “today, as far as art is concerned, just about every thought is
possible” (Gyorgy, 1999, p. 431). Whereas he shows us how the artist and the artworld
have undergone significant change in recent decades, he does not acknowledge the
power of new overarching narratives taking the place of old ones. Nor does he allow for
the possibility that art, artists, and institutions of art can undergo radical change and
yet remain connected to a tradition. Gyorgy’s assessment of the symptoms of these
changes is helpful, but his verdict that Danto or anyone else can rightly equate the end
of “universal modernism” with the end of art history is wrong. This is a dangerously
false (at best, poetic) overstatement of the situation. To make my assumptions clearer,
the following section locates John Dewey’s educational philosophy as a foundation of
aesthetics.
3. Art as Inquiry
As MacIntyre argues, practices need to be configured in a certain way to be
significant in moral life. In this section, I attempt to articulate, if only partially, a view of
art as inquiry that grounds my study of the moral nature of artistic genius. After
comparing and contrasting several views of art, I turn to Dewey’s understanding of
aesthetic experience as a foundation for art practice. In Chapter VIII, the critique of
genius will be shown to amend this view as a paradigm for art practice.
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3.1 Kinds of Inquiry
To better understand how theorists conceive of the relation between art making
and inquiry, perhaps we should consider their views of art education. Parsons (2002),
an art educator, says that “the idea [of the aesthetic] provides us a way of talking about
artworks and our response to them that defines and justifies some goals for art
education and influences our thinking about curriculum” (p. 24). In so many words, he
names two major projects of modern aesthetic philosophy: defining the essential
characteristics of art and defining the aesthetic quality of experience. Both projects are
complicated by the difficulty of talking about the effect of art on human experience.21
The status of art making and aesthetic philosophy as academic disciplines
complicates the situation. As a philosopher worrying about the teaching of aesthetics,
Marshall (1995) argues that a philosophical attitude helps students understand art,
that aesthetic theories often “blur the boundaries between art and aesthetics,” and that
this “opens an avenue of rapprochement between the worlds of the artist and the
philosopher” (Marshall, 1995, p. 50). Guided by these outcomes, he says that an
impartial pedagogy should make the three following assumptions:
[That] the purpose of the study of aesthetic theories is to discover which one is,
in fact, true; …[that] there are canons of reason or objective criteria or methods
of thought according to which we can discern the truth; …[and that] the
21
A brief note on nomenclature may preclude some potential confusion. “Aesthetics” often refers to a
philosophical discipline—a philosophical orientation towards art under which multiple
philosophies of art are gathered. Here, I will treat aesthetics as referring to these philosophies.
64
pursuit of truth is valuable for its own sake or apart from whatever other ends
these truths might serve. (p. 42)
In contrast to Marshall’s pedagogy that treats aesthetics as an inquiry into the
normative aspects of art, Niklas (1994) presents a more student-centered,
constructivist approach. She says:
My hermeneutical approach focuses on philosophical issues which emerge in
the experience of art. It goes from art to philosophy and takes the work of art as
a starting point, a doorway to philosophical questions and concepts whose
significance reaches beyond the questions of art and beauty. (p. 2)
This dialogical direction, from art to philosophy, begins with questions about art that
can lead to questions about aesthetics. Even more than Marshall, Niklas seems to feel
that aesthetics is valuable to students independent from its value as philosophy of art,
as it is a discourse that leads to philosophical reflection. This kind of inquiry includes
1) responses to art and 2) posing philosophical questions.
Another kind of inquiry is moral in nature. Awareness of the connections
between academic disciplines leads some scholars to imagine a philosophical curriculum
in the arts. Choi (2001) argues that aesthetic education should be understood as moral
education, and that it is a necessary component of general education in the humanities.
By claiming that education is the development of coherent intellectual, moral, and
aesthetic values in the mind, he argues that the humanities and the arts are part of a
tradition of examining, critiquing, and defining the good life (Choi, 2001). In line with
this view, Costantino (2002) is a proponent of making aesthetic philosophy an explicit
part of art education: “If we expect students to have a substantive understanding of art
and its contribution to human experience, it is not sufficient for aesthetic philosophies
65
to remain implicit in an art teacher's curriculum” (p. 219). Davis (2000) also argues
that educational theories should be made part of the metacognitive curriculum of the
art classroom.
Kindler (2000) finds that the social and political aspects of art often appear as
primary values in art education and challenges this view by recognizing the immediacy
of art’s emotional presence. I understand this claim as supporting the view that art is a
repository of a distinct kind of knowledge. Hicks (1999) defines aesthetic education as a
complex activity of both knowing the human environment and understanding the
philosophy of the beautiful. He also finds that although American culture is a highly
visual culture, Americans generally do not value aesthetic education (Hicks, 1999, p.
42). In contrast to this observation, Wilson (1998) argues that art making is essential
to the survival of human communities. He adopts a perspective that finds cultural
practices as primary means of creating shared knowledge, and he uses this theory to
show the relevance of art education to society.
The purpose of aesthetic education hinges upon the meaning of “aesthetic
experience.” The notion of aesthetic experience, however, has been particularly
problematic for philosophers of art. Some theorists have sought to define art by the
concept of aesthetic experience, while others have resisted this kind of definition
alongside a doubt about the nature and validity of the concept. Above all, its
instrumental use as a way of thinking about art and experience must be balanced
against possible misunderstandings. Shusterman (1997) develops a ground for
aesthetic experience that serves as a useful framework from the perspective of art
66
education—informed as it is by both an awareness of the first person perspective and
artworld discourses.
3.2 Aesthetic Experience
In nineteenth and twentieth century art discourses, the notion of “aesthetic
experience” emerged as a key evaluative framework for identifying art. As it has been
crafted as an intellectual idea, aesthetic experience describes experience that is both
individualistic and pertaining to characteristics of objects that are understood to
transcend cultures and contexts. It does not just refer to one’s experience of art.
Shusterman (1997) says that “though the concept of art (as a historically determined
concept) can be somewhat reshaped, it cannot be convincingly defined in such a global
way so as to be coextensive with aesthetic experience” (p. 34). But intense philosophical
criticism of the concept of aesthetic experience is even more problematic, for “once a
potent embodiment of art’s sense and value, aesthetic experience is now
‘hermeneutered’” (p. 38). Increased theoretical scrutiny, therefore, has drained the
concept of its common sense value. Shusterman (1997) warns aesthetic philosophers,
“perhaps aesthetic experience, and not just the philosophical value of its concept, has
almost reached its end” (p. 39). Though philosophers need not go this far to draw
attention to the problems of aesthetics, this hypothesis emphasizes the potential
connection between trends in philosophy and the human world.
67
The decreased philosophical value of aesthetic experience is a large enough
problem for art education. Shusterman (1997) offers the following example of a turn
away from aesthetic experience in the artworld:
Goodman and Danto were sensitively reflecting developments in the artworld,
which required ever more interpretation as art became more cerebrally
conceptual in pursuing what Danto describes as its Hegelian quest to become its
own philosophy: art as theory of art. (p. 38)
On this view, art shares many of the problems of philosophy—maybe even ethics—but
other modernist projects come to mind as well: art as investment, fetish object, style,
decoration, and so on. These projects lead art further away from ethics.
The concept of aesthetic experience has widely fallen out of the lexicon of
contemporary art, Shusterman argues, as a result of its historical ambiguity about its
definition and a turn away from interest in phenomenology. The definitional problem
stems from the concept of the aesthetic: “Benjamin’s critique does not deny the
continuing importance of aesthetic experience, only its romantic conceptualization as
pure immediacy of meaning and isolation from the rest of life” (Shusterman, 1997, p.
31). This seems to be a weak objection to a phenomenological account of experience—
an objection that points to a more general aversion to phenomenology.
Critics such as Benjamin doubt that talk about aesthetic experience can hold up
under scrutiny; it sounds too much like a loose way of talking about emotions,
memory, physiognomy, and so on. But, as with a stronger objection phenomenology
(where aesthetic experience is seen as a defining characteristic art), Shusterman
recommends austerity. Thus, one reason why aesthetic experience should be dropped
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as a criterion of essentialism is that “if aesthetic experience is to do the job of
demarcating the entire realm of art, then its essentially evaluative content must be
abandoned” (Shusterman, 1997, p. 35). Too much focus on theoretical boundaries will
likely deflate the usefulness of the concept in discussions of individual works of art.
The concept may be most useful when it is deployed in philosophical discourse
only indirectly. Maxine Greene’s idea of “attending” in an aesthetic experience refers to
the language we use to describe art, ask questions, imagine possibilities, and “see new
realities.” She claims that aesthetic education demands “such reflection and such talk”
(Greene, 2001, p. 25). Attending, on this view, is related to perception. Greene says, “I
simply want to suggest the dependence of the qualitative aspect of things on a certain
sort of noticing” (p. 15). Educative aesthetic experiences, it is important to note, depend
on this rapt and directed attention. She says, as a teacher, about the interaction between
a teacher and students, “all I can do, as a teacher-critic, is to find a language that may
help them attend” (p. 26).
The strong objection to a phenomenological account goes along with a turn
away from a holistic view of aesthetic experience. “Viewed as a univocal concept,
aesthetic experience seems too confused to be redeemed as useful; so the first task is to
articulate its contrasting conceptions” (Shusterman, 1997, p. 32). Shusterman’s
positive account of aesthetic experience goes beyond phenomenology and includes four
dimensions of experience—an evaluative, phenomenological, semantic, and
demarcation-definitional dimension. He defines these dimensions as follows:
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First, aesthetic experience is essentially valuable and enjoyable; call this its
evaluative dimension. Second, it is something vividly felt and subjectively
savored, affectivity absorbing us and focusing our attention on its immediate
presence and thus standing out from the ordinary flow of routine experience;
call this its phenomenological dimension. Third, it is meaningful experience,
not mere sensation; call this its semantic dimension. (Its affective power and
meaning together explain how aesthetic experience can be so transfigurative.)
Fourth, it is a distinctive experience closely identified with the distinction of fine
art and representing art’s essential aim; call this the demarcation-definitional
dimension. (p. 30)
There are several worrisome aspects of this definition of aesthetic experience,
and several helpful contributions to a philosophy of art as inquiry. Shusterman makes
aesthetic experience sound too much like a fun trip to the theater rather than a
sensuous dimension of everyday experience, and for this reason his definition is
probably close to a common sense definition. This would be problematic if he stopped
after naming the first two dimensions. But the association he draws to specific social
activities such as the fine arts, as well as the caveat that aesthetic experience be
meaningful, supports his definition with a stronger philosophical foundation.
Together, these four aspects tease apart personal experience from a socio-historical
dimension of experience, as each dimension involves the individual and the greater
social landscape to different degrees.
In these ways, aesthetic experience shows itself to be at least as complex as the
theories that attempt to explain it. Aesthetics is continuous with moral theory in the
sense that both discourses are interested in human experience, and when knowledge of
the quality of a person’s inner experience is sought, evidence of another sort is usually
gathered. In the case of the moral saint, for example, his behavior toward others tells
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us what we need to know. In the case of the artistic genius, artworks serve as evidence.
What one can extract from an encounter with art is not immediately apparent,
however, and art may not be the only evidence that should count.
3.3 John Dewey’s Philosophy of Education
A critique of the concept of genius coincides with the cultivation of at least two
values necessary to my identification as an artist: a commitment to both art and truth.
My belief in art and truth also grew alongside my inquiry into how MacIntyre’s
remarks about subordination elaborated his conception of moral life. With his
understanding of education and educational principles, Dewey articulated a view of art
that sets the stage for a moral critique of genius despite a backdrop of diverse and
conflicting theoretical views of art. This same view of art is wedded to an equally
important concept of truth. Thus, Dewey’s philosophy of art is a grounding
assumption of such a critique. Furthermore, if a dimension of genius has implications
for art education, Dewey’s view of experience should be seen as part of a philosophical
foundation for art education.
Since Dewey links aesthetics with education, his manner of developing a notion
of art involves approaching art in the context of education. “By rethinking art in terms
of aesthetic experience, Dewey hoped we could radically enlarge and democratize the
domain of art, integrating it more fully into the real world which would be greatly
improved by the pursuit of such manifold arts of living” (Shusterman, 1997, p. 33).
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Dewey (1934/1980) turns to the themes of civilization and community when he says, “it
is a matter of communication and participation in values of life by means of the
imagination, and works of art are the most intimate and energetic means of aiding
individuals to share in the arts of living” (p. 336). In this way, his vision of art and
aesthetics is deeply committed to democracy, laying the foundation for understanding
art as a shared, educational project. Dewey challenges us to perceive our environment
as continuous with ourselves, to experience education as imaginative play, and to
understand art as a byproduct of play.
Dewey (1934/1980) gives an account of art as the material “artifacts” of
educational experience, and an exploration of human interaction with artifacts of
human civilization in general. Dewey’s concept of a “live creature” captures his
conception of experience as a comprehensive foundation for his philosophical views.
He builds up, systematically, a language for talking about living as a process of growth,
where humans are situated and social beings that turn “experience upon [themselves]
to deepen and intensify [their] own qualities” (Dewey, 1934/1980, p. 34). He introduces
a vocabulary for investigating the esthetic (sic) qualities of experience that includes
such ideas as form (p. 14), rhythm (p. 16), sense (p. 22), continuity (p. 28), unity (p. 37),
and perception (p. 53). These terms depict various aspects of art and art making as “a
quality of doing and of what is done” (p. 214).
Artists themselves have subsequently explored many of the philosophical
concerns Dewey raises (e.g., expressionism, technical production, and viewership). But
Dewey resists classifying art objects into broad categories (p. 217); experience, he tells
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us, always begins with the individual—aesthetic experience is a personal experience.
Attempts to explain first person experience from the inside out—phenomenology—
often rely on “thick” stories about the nature of art and, by extension, reality. But
Dewey goes beyond a strictly phenomenological account. “Communication is the
process of creating participation, of making common what had been isolated and
singular . . . . Art breaks through barriers that divide human beings” (p. 244). The art
object, he says, has a strange life beyond each person’s experience; it has the potential to
change the way humans interact. With this effect in mind, he argues that the function
of criticism “is the re-education of perception of works of art” (p. 324). As one of many
kinds of art education, Dewey’s interest in the perception of art follows his interest in
inquiry.
3.4 Art for One’s Self
Dewey posits a permanent incompleteness of education. In the first chapter of
Democracy and Education he says, “life is a self-renewing process through action
upon the environment” (Dewey, 1916/1966, p. 2). Our environment is defined by our
relationship to the natural world (i.e., the “world itself”) and social forces (i.e., family,
language, culture), and I will say more about this below. Dewey makes the inevitability
of our interaction with this “social world” quite clear. He says, “the continuity of any
experience, through renewing of the social group, is a literal fact. Education, in its
broadest sense, is the means of this social continuity” (p. 2). Experience and education
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are intertwined—education is the sustenance and substance of human society. “Society
not only continues to exist by transmission, by communication, but it may fairly be said
to exist in transmission, in communication” (p. 4). Here I will attempt to make some
sense of this enigmatic claim.
Dewey’s conception of education locates art making as this kind of transmission
and communication. First, he revitalizes our vocabulary by asserting that education is
an end in itself. It is important (so important!) that we do not gloss over this claim as a
mere truism. So often is education understood as a means to an end outside of
education, we must take Dewey’s talk of “ends” and “aims” as decisive to his philosophy,
“for it is assumed that the aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their
education—or that the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth”
(Dewey, 1916/1966, p. 100). Upon further examination, this principle is not so general
as it first appears to be. Dewey is decidedly not making the claim that education is
hermetically sealed off or unbounded by competing claims on the “good” or the “right.”
On the contrary, he argues from the premise that the attempt to discern the end of
human life is itself a value-laden process.
With ends in mind, he says, “it is nonsense to talk about the aim of education—
or any other undertaking—where conditions do not permit of foresight of results, and
do not stimulate a person to look ahead to see what the outcome of a given activity is to
be” (p. 102). On this view, education is inherently a moral undertaking. An
uncharitable critic might bring on a charge of circularity here: we adopt the principle of
education as an end in itself because the principle demands that we adopt it—we are
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educated ad infinitum and there is no moral shape to this kind of life. To resist this
nihilistic charge of moral “flatness” we need only accept Dewey’s minimalist accounts of
anthropology and psychology: that humans are born into a social world which we may
slowly come to know with increasing accuracy. Through the process, we shape our own
life and the social world. But Dewey demands that we understand this observation to be
somewhat false: the distinction between “self” and “not-self” is an unfortunate
consequence of language that can obstruct the process of living. Dewey’s concept of
environment expands his notion of living as a “self” in the world.
Dewey’s notion of self challenges us to perceive our environment as an
extension of ourselves.22 He makes several distinctions to generate his special
definition of environment. He says, “the words ‘environment,’ ‘medium’ denote
something more that surroundings which encompass an individual. They denote the
specific continuity of the surroundings with his own active tendencies” (Dewey,
1916/1966, p. 11). At first glance, the idea that we are “continuous” with our
environment is too abstract. To add another layer of specificity to this claim, Dewey
says, “the things with which a man varies are his genuine environment,” so it’s possible
that one’s environment is made up of “things that are remote in space and time” (p.
11). For humans, the environment is also social because our “activities are associated
with [other people]” (p. 12).
22
Richard Eldridge reads Dewey’s concern with self as a concern with “personhood.” For an
extended discussion of what personhood entail, see Eldridge (1989).
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This conception of the environment informs our thinking about art making. If
art making is an activity in which we experience continuity with our environment by
actively varying things which constitute it, then art making will be a process in which
learning about one’s self can take place. For Dewey, art education is not only learning
how to make art, but also learning about our environment. Furthermore, to perceive
art as Dewey perceives it we have to understand art making as necessarily educative—a
reflective process that dwells on continuity between the artist’s self and his
environment. Continuity, however, must be understood according to Dewey as
dependent on a person’s active interest in his interaction with the world.
The difference between a “spectator” and an “agent” (or “participant”) is that “the
latter is bound up with what is going on; its outcome makes a difference to him”
(Dewey, 1916/1966, p. 124). Dewey elaborates on this distinction by invoking the
concept of interest:
There are words which denote (the agent’s) attitude: concern, interest. These
words suggest that a person is bound up with the possibilities inhering in
objects; that he is accordingly on the lookout for what they are likely to do to
him; and that, on the basis of his expectation or foresight, he is eager to act so
as to give things one turn rather than another. (p. 125)
Dewey construes interest as foresight about our environment, and he appeals to the
normative usage of the word. “The word interest, in its ordinary usage, expresses (i)
the whole state of active development, (ii) the objective results that are foreseen and
wanted, and (iii) the personal emotional inclination” (p. 126). That is, interest is central
to the understanding of art as educational—the special meaning of interest highlights
the significance of humans “to be interested is to be absorbed in, wrapped up in, carried
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away by, some object. To take an interest is to be on the alert, to care about, to be
attentive” (p. 126). In this way, Dewey’s conception of interest further develops his view
of the connectedness between human agents and the environment: how we undergo a
process of development that we experience as a “situated” being, giving us a more
capacious framework for appreciating the natural world. With this theoretical
foundation, we can now tentatively argue that art should be an instrument for
negotiating the relationship between a person and the world.
Presumably we already negotiate our relationship to the world in a variety of
ways (e.g., by maintaining relationships with other people, cultivating a personal style,
pursuing a career of one sort or another, and so on), but Dewey calls into question the
breadth and depth of our actions as a process of self-renewal. His concept of agency
implies not only participation, but reflective participation: if we need to be able to choose
between different outcomes that will make a difference to us, then we need to be able to
measure the difference. Here, the value of education as a process of reflecting on
conduct is apparent, and art is obviously one instrument among many. Thus, we
confront the skeptical question: why art education? Adults could conceivably reflect on
their conduct in a great many ways. Why not promote science education, language
education, religious education, political education, environmental education, or any
other education that enhances our understanding of our relationship to the world?
Dewey appreciates the diversity of our modes of reflection and carves out a
special place for art. Art answers to the need for a particular outcome of education as
he sees it—namely, that education should shape the time we devote to work and
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leisure.23 The comprehensiveness of Dewey’s philosophy of education becomes quite
apparent here—there seems to be no place in our lives that is immune to the
transformative process of education. Is this really possible or desirable? Indeed, Dewey
(1916/1966) believes that democracy is beholden to the ideal of education as play:
The realization of a form of social life in which interests are mutually
interpenetrating, and where progress, or readjustment, is an important
consideration, makes a democratic community more interested than other
communities have cause to be in deliberate and systematic education. (p. 87)
This statement can be seen at once promoting institutions of education as well
as cultures of education. The artworld, understood as a cultural force, is responsible
for making leisure more thoughtful and work more playful. Dewey directs our thinking
about the psychological aspects of art making. He says, “only a personal response
involving the imagination can possibly procure realization even of pure ‘facts’” (p. 236).
Art making must be imaginative to be educative just as it must be educative to have a
positive effect upon the social environment. For Dewey, imagination is cerebral and
emotional, and he believes that “the imagination is as much a normal and integral part
of human activity as is muscular movement” (p. 237). Thus, for Dewey, art’s role in
democratic life is the integration of the individual and the environment, and a playful
manifestation of imagination in a social space.
23
For an extended discussion of Dewey’s notion of play, see Huizinga (1950).
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4. Conclusion
In art, work and leisure combine as serious, imaginative play. The greatest
obstacle to this will be a sense of alienation—a perceived lack of continuity between
one’s self and the world. To overcome this, Dewey recommends a respect for the
dignity and uniqueness of human experience, and argues that the object and reward of
learning is continued capacity for growth. The doubt we feel as artists is often intense
and corporeal, but there is no royal road for learning in Dewey’s ideal conception of
education. Understanding art making as an educative experience enables us—even
compels us—into action as artists. What exactly it means to “act as an artist” is beyond
the scope of my dissertation, but we have retrieved at least one perspective: as a result
of the peculiar tradition and institutions of the artworld, art will likely convey not only
information, but also, as Dewey anticipates, ideas about being a “self” in the world.
On Dewey’s view, artistic activity carries inquiry further than mere
pontification.24 Works of art are shown to modify the world in a useful way. And
because art demands a particular exactness in our thinking, it is unlikely that would be
otherwise knowledgeable about the things we investigate through art. This Deweyan
perspective does not, however, currently permeate institutions of art education, and
though it is a vital contribution to philosophy of art education, I do not attempt here to
24
Sullivan (2005) puts forward the view that art practice can be a kind of research, but I am more
interested in art making as inquiry. Inquiry implies a personal set of desires, interests, and values
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articulate how it intersects with natural science. Philip Kitcher gave a lecture series on
what he calls the “naturalistic impulse” at Columbia University in 2004, and much of
what interests me about the intersection between naturalism and the human sciences
can be traced back to his work on Dewey’s Pragmatism.25
With this definitional ground in mind, we can now turn to a critique of genius
from the perspective of art education, and its implications for the achievement of
subordination as one part of growth. This is a “second chance” for genius—the
concept’s rich history and various meanings make it intelligible to contemporary artists
and art educators, but also subject it to uneducative understandings. In Chapter III, I
discuss the problem of genius and outline a methodology for reclaiming its educational
value. Though my critique will ultimately be a philosophical one (and not historical per
se) the philosophical task arises from the historical milieu.
that research does not. Yet inquiry is partially defined by philosophy and partially defined by
practice, and therefore, thoroughly grounded in social life.
25
For a contemporary scientific view of naturalism, see Kitcher (1992).
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III–CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
1. The Problem of Artistic Genius
1.1 A Brief Genealogy
In ancient and medieval times, a genius was thought to be a spirit who gave
good or bad advice. This understanding of genius is traceable in philosophical work as
far back as Plato, who observed that poets “work in a kind of frenzy they cannot
account for” (Barzun, 1989, p. 344). By the beginning of modernity (c. 1500), “genius
came to mean a knack of doing a particular thing—a gifted person was said to ‘have a
genius’” (p. 342). Great artists in particular are thought to be geniuses, perhaps owing
to the origin of the term. But “what we mean by genius derives rather from the Latin
ingenium, meaning both natural disposition and innate ability” (Eysenck, 1995, p. 13).
Recent academic debate about genius is related to its evolving ordinary meaning. This
debate includes Romantic expansions and elaborations on an Enlightenment
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conception of genius that deepened and complicated the concept, both as a matter of
artistic productivity and intellectual ability.
From the late eighteenth century to the present, the term genius has come to be
used to describe people who are seen as innovators—a notion which was fostered in
relation to and by other tenets of modernity. The modern notion of originality gathers
its meaning in Romanticism, wherein philosophers (and thinkers of all kinds, especially
poets) viewed persons as geniuses if they were understood to be able to create “original”
and “exemplary” works of art. For example, Wang’s (2000) discussion of Romanticism
explores genius as a theoretical construct with respect to literature. Arguing that
Romanticism is a trope on the value of history, Wang claims, “a consideration of
artistic beauty invariably leads to the matter of its creation” (p. 22). Genius cannot be
easily dismissed, he argues, as it addresses the “judging subject’s” relation to nature,
which he associates with Romanticism as a literary critic (p. 16). The “catachresis of
genius,” so named, becomes an aporia in literary interpretation.
In the twentieth century, art critics frequently used genius to describe great
artists, often calling attention to different character traits as different contexts
require.26 Rosalind Krauss’ interest in the nature of originality in the age of mechanical
reproduction leads her to the matter of tradition (Krauss, 1981). Her thesis that the
avant-garde can be understood as a result of a discourse about originality informs my
26
For a representative example of how critics characterize genius, see Hartmann (1991), p. 276.
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interest in genius. 27 She claims that some artists have been on a quest to create original
art, while others are aware of the absurdity of this quest.
Today, genius is commonly understood as an individual trait or set of distinct
abilities. For example, Armstrong (1998) defines genius as a set of qualities including
curiosity, playfulness, imagination, creativity, wonder, wisdom, inventiveness, vitality,
sensitivity, flexibility, humor, and joy. This view comes out of psychological literature
that has self-consciously attempted to demystify genius. Psychologists have largely
focused on creativity as an essential aspect of genius. 28 Gruber recommends against
adopting a view of genius, and adopting instead a process-oriented view of creativity
deduced from case studies of exemplary historical figures. His theory of creativity
follows from the ordinary meaning of genius as an innate quality or disposition that
facilitates the achievement of excellence (Duddy, 1999; Barzun, 1989; Bromwich, 1985;
Nahm, 1950).
Social theory presents us with a model whereby communities of like-minded
practitioners grants recognition to exceptional practitioners (Alicke, 1997; Wheeler &
Miyake, 1992; Wood, 1989).29 As with disciplinary knowledge, this identification
27
For more on her conception of originality as a discourse, see Krauss’ (1981) essay The Originality of
the Avant-Garde. She discusses the meaning of Modernist art that can be understood, from her
critical perspective, as the result of inquiry into the meaning and nature of originality.
28
See Ward, T. B., Finke, R. A., & Smith, S. M. (1995) as an example of how research on creativity
overlaps research on genius.
29
For more about the nature of hierarchical social labeling, there is a cottage industry of
psychological work on “social comparison” to reference. See, e.g., Alicke, et al. (1997), Festinger
(1954), Morse & Gergen (1970), Wheeler & Miyake (1992), and Wood (1989). This literature also
provides an explanation for why there are self-proclaimed geniuses, and shows how the nature of
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appears to be objective (universalizing) in its intent. The theoretical assumption that
cognitive processes contribute to greater creativity is often reified by the psychological
and cognitive study of creativity. Testing is often used to assess creativity with such
tests as the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, Wallach and Kogan Tests, Remote
Associates Test, and Thinking Creatively with Sounds and Words (as cited in Scope,
1998). Recent literature on creativity follows from the American Psychological
Association highlighting the importance of the study of creativity in 1950 (Scope,
1998).30 Exceptional products of the visual arts are recognized as creative (Weisberg,
1988), and also that theoretical models and inventions that result from work in the
natural sciences are seen as creative (Gardner, 1988; Weisberg, 1988). Although one is
tempted to associate creativity with extremely high levels of achievement based on these
examples, Milgram (1990) argues that creativity is not limited to exemplarity in
personal and vocational spheres (as cited in Scope, 1998, p. 2). Scope notes that
creativity is a complex construct, and follows other researchers in identifying four
major branches of research: creative products, creativity as a psychological trait,
cognitive processes and creativity, and environmental factors and creativity.
Sternberg and Lubart (1996) conclude that creative people often exhibit
psychological traits that include independence of judgment, self-confidence, attraction
this claim reinforces the folk psychology notion that recognition by a community is an essential
aspect of genius.
30
I am indebted to Ellis Scope for his doctoral work, A Meta-Analysis of Research on Creativity: The
Effects of Instructional Variables (1998). My awareness of recent psychological research on
creativity (Gardner, 1988; Milgram, 1990; Runco, 1994; Sternberg & Lubart, 1996; Weisberg, 1988) is
informed by his analysis.
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to complexity, aesthetic orientation, and risk-taking (as cited in Scope, 1998, p. 5).
According to a cognition perspective, the cognitive processes necessary for the
manifestation of creativity are problem identification, generation of solutions and ideas,
and evaluation and modification of ideas and solutions. Runco (1994) finds that these
processes need not occur in any particular order. Thus, creativity is commonly treated
synonymously with creative processes, which are, in turn, often identified under the
more specific rubric of creative problem solving. Scope (1998) suggests metacognitive
skills influence creative problem solving, when these skills are understood to be
knowledge about general cognitive strategies and procedural knowledge about
monitoring, evaluating, and regulating these strategies (p. 7).
Alongside the problem of defining genius is the problem of identifying young
geniuses. Hulbert (2005, November 20) explores current and past trends in this area.
Recently, for example, the effort to give young geniuses a superior education has been
widely adopted in American schools, while private efforts have also been implemented
on a wide scale (Hulbert, 2005, November 20, p. 68). Psychological research has been at
the heart of much of these efforts, though its meaning for education is less than clear.
The driving force of such social change has been, in many ways, the hope for greater
and more significant social change—the proponents of identifying genius at an early
age are seemingly driven by the image of past geniuses as change agents, individuals
whose achievements bring a cascade of new ideas, technologies, and possibilities to
civilization.
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The uneasy status of the not-yet-eminent genius has brought about a new
vocabulary for talking about the cause, meaning, and nature of what is sometimes only
known as genius after the effect of a person’s achievements are widely understood.
Finding the mark of creativity in adolescence—even preadolescence—often means
comparing individuals’ achievements against others’ on a battery of tests. It means
quantifying outcomes that are not easily quantified, especially in the case of artistic
ability. There is little evidence to believe researchers bent on identifying the greatest
geniuses are on the right track since most children who once achieved the highest
scores on these tests settle into comfortable lives as merely above-average practitioners
in the arts and sciences (Hulbert, 2005, November 20, p. 78).
The history of the concept of genius seems to reflect the diverse ways artists’
work is valued. On closer inspection, however, this rich interweaving of ideas by
aestheticians, ethicists, Romantics, and post-Romantics alike, fails would-be artists in
subtle ways. By failing to take responsibility for the educational value of the discourse
surrounding genius, the concept is turned inside out and understood and discussed
from the perspective of the audience—the consumers of art. This has the insidious
effect of passively influencing art pedagogy that, in turn, trains students to appreciate
art that is made by someone whose phenomenological experience is safely and
conveniently inaccessible for the purpose of critique.31 Thus, the forces of arbitrariness
31
The art historian may object here, noting that art history is the careful and deliberate study of such
phenomena. The separation of Art History and Studio Art as disciplines, however, artificially
restricts the possibilities of a fruitful exchange of ideas. For more on this circumstance, see Efland
(1990), especially Chapter Eight: Art Education from World War II to the Present.
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and contingency gathered by social practices that may be external to the practice of art
making influence the reception of the concept of genius.
In this way, genius may overwhelm an ideal of excellence with the idea of luck.
To be recognized in any positive way by a community creates the possibility of a new
hierarchy of relationships, but the notion of genius often distorts the value of
recognition. That is, if genius is believed to be an accident of birth, 32 how can a
community nurture a sense that art making is something to which one is “called,” and
therefore a worthwhile, lifelong project one cultivates for one’s self and others?33 What
if a community has too many geniuses or not enough? In a community that values
genius, might an artist become too reliant on those judgments or make unwarranted
judgments about his talents?
The world is a complex milieu of ideas and actions, and the concept of genius
cannot and should not be divorced from the manifold aspects of human experience out
of which it rose, in which it trades, and into which it can again be cast. The purpose of
this study, outlined in detail in the following section, is to confront the concept at the
edge of history and on the brink of the future of art education.
32
Even sophisticated debate about developmental determinism, and a high-minded attitude about the
balance between “nature” and “nurture,” does not banish the persistent and reasonable worry that
underlying biological structures have an effect on intelligence, broadly conceived. See, e.g.,
Eysenck (1995), especially Chapter 2 on genius and intelligence.
33
See Hansen (1995) for his rich description of teaching as a calling.
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1.2 Research Questions
MacIntyre’s concept of subordination locates the force of genius at one moment
in a social landscape demarcated by practices—as a currency of practitioners’
relationships with other practitioners. This allows us to imagine a “moral framework”
for understanding genius, and I explored that framework in Chapter I—Gauguin made
paintings that explored the moral status of his professional decisions and activities. On
considering Gauguin’s example, I argue that his achievements in art are moral
achievements, even though they may give rise to undesireable consequences. In
Chapter II, I elaborated the problems a moral theory based on this framework could
aim to resolve. These were shown to be educational problems.
As I outlined in Chapter II, MacIntyre’s story of how people enter into practices
is incomplete. Perhaps he avoids telling a story he is not qualified to tell—warning, as
he does, that “the uninitiated” cannot fully understand excellence in a practice—
practice-specific stories that require insider knowledge. Perhaps he prefers not to
discuss practitioners’ perspective, or sees it as having little consequence for moral
theory. Either way, I believe it to be a significant problem, both for moral theory and
practitioners with an eye to education. Genius, understood as an extreme example of
excellence, will be shown to define the educative nature of MacIntyre’s concept of
subordination.
Some individuals achieve profoundly individual yet resonant outcomes in their
art practices. Putting the concept of genius front and center—a concept that gathers
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meaning historically in association with the arts—is a strategy for better understanding
the impact of subordination on excellence. In addition, a critique of genius is potentially
significant for arts practitioners, who cope with genius as one aspect of art practice.
The matter of what constitutes a practice-specific account of artistic genius therefore
emerges as a central question. Other questions follow. How does the concept of artistic
genius relate to moral excellence? How does the concept of artistic genius relate to art
practice? How do art educators currently understand artistic genius? How does
subordination lead to artistic excellence? How is art understood as original and
exemplary? These questions are directed at conceptualizing a particular answer. I am
not just asking, “What is genius?” without a context. Because my critique emerges
from my experience as a student of art, I am asking what role genius plays in art
education.34
34
Verhesschen’s (1991) work on narrative research as educational research is significant for my
study. He makes a comparison between narrative research and philosophy after surveying
narrative studies and finds that they lead to revelations for the researcher and a subsequent
transformation. By posing narrative research as a way to answer research questions when
meaning for a practitioner is at stake, Verhesschen argues that this is a legitimate end for
scientific research.
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2. Methodology
2.1 My Approach to the Problem
The concept of genius began as an explanation of artistic expression and has
become associated with intelligence. This shift in perspective speaks to genius’
usefulness as a concept. Social practices such as the arts seem to cohere well if some
practitioners are seen as geniuses, even if the concept is somewhat antagonistic to
some practitioners. In a social landscape besieged by economics, politics, sports, and
other spheres of influence, geniuses may increase the autonomy of art practice. If this
is seen as a beneficial outcome, and I believe it should be, then the concept warrants
further investigation and consideration.
Theories of genius are fragmented and incomplete, yet there is the need to tell
as comprehensive a story as possible—if not for the sake of philosophy, then for the
sake of those practitioners who are negatively influenced by the concept. This is a
quality that philosophy rightly aspires to: a quality that makes a theory potentially more
useful, as well as potentially wrong. With this positive project in mind, I treat the
notion of “artistic genius” as partaking of a more universal concept of genius. The
specificity to the arts both reflects the concept’s historical relation to arts practices and
gestures toward the broader concept of genius. The practice-specific concept suggests a
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special meaning of excellence in art, and leaves open the possibly of whether there are
other kinds of genius.
Genius is often linked to creativity, which is often result-oriented—a conception
of genius that has been strengthened by work in the sciences (Ghiselin, 1952). But
there is also the possibility that genius is related to creativity, and there is an additional
distinction made in psychological literature between act-oriented and process-oriented
conceptions of creativity.35 When conceived of as an act or a process, genius seems less
like an enduring characteristic. Gardner (1993) recommends avoiding the question
“What is creativity?” and asks instead, “Where is creativity?” This question points to an
interpretive structure as the key to understanding creativity. But there are many
available structures: MacIntyre’s theory of moral life, Gardner’s own theory of multiple
intelligences, Freud’s theory of the unconscious, Danto’s theory of the end of art
history, and so on. To some extent, almost any theoretical structure will do. Contrary
to Gardner’s intuition, therefore, I believe there is more at stake in the former
question. By choosing MacIntyre’s philosophy as a philosophical framework, and
Dewey’s philosophy as a guiding principle, I have answered this question only
provisionally. There is much left to be defined, and it is important in a different way
than anticipated by Gardner. It is important for art.
35
In an unpublished paper on creativity, Anthony Cocciolo distinguishes between art-oriented and
process-oriented conceptions of creativity (personal communication, December 15, 2005). He
helpfully draws a contrast between Koestler’s (1964) act-oriented conception, and Gruber’s (1989)
process-oriented conception.
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Like MacIntyre (1984), I prefer the notion of a “practice” when specifying what
is similarly captured by the concepts of “domain” or “discipline.” In MacIntyre’s lexicon,
the term “practice” evocatively captures and emphasizes relations between social
activities and individuals’ lives. He partly defines practices as complex social activities (p.
189), and many of the arts meet his terms (which I will discuss at length in Chapter V).
Practices need not be strictly defined, and nowhere do I discuss exactly how art making
qualifies as a practice other than to emphasize art as inquiry in Chapter II. Like other
aspects of the natural world, and perhaps perplexingly so, there is no permanent
“nature” of many human activities. Any endeavor to better capture the past, present,
and future qualities of practices, therefore, begins on unsteady ground.
2.2 My Analysis of the Problem
A theme of my study—the achievement of subordination—requires that I
critique MacIntyre’s systematic moral philosophy to use it as a guide for philosophizing
about genius as one aspect of art practice. I speak in MacIntyre’s language because my
project partly overlaps his project, and it locates my argument in a wider discourse. The
same can be said for my use of Kant and Gadamer’s philosophies, as I encounter these
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philosopher’s insights with respect to the conceptual window I establish with my
interest in a particular kind of excellence in art practice.36
It is difficult to ascertain the impact of my critique of genius on MacIntyre’s
theory of virtue, Kant’s theory of judgment, or Gadamer’s theory of understanding.
Although such a critique potentially speaks back to all these philosophies, I am
deploying them here as theoretical frameworks—historically significant lenses through
which a critique of genius can gain traction on a messy, complex ground of experience.
My experience of art practice, shaped and colored by culture, context, and
circumstance, only partially guides my philosophical approach; my previous work in
philosophy is also influential with respect to the overall form of my critique.
I began my critique with an exegesis of Dewey’s view of education to put
forward a positive view of the conjunction of art and education, but it is not the
purpose of my critique to argue against alternative views of art. Genius is studied to
better understand both artistic excellence and artistic influence. Moral philosophy,
epistemology, hermeneutics—philosophies of these types (and many others) can be
(and should be) deployed to improve art education, but this is a slow and multifaceted
process. My critique of genius is partly a critique of the third person perspective
embodied in psychological literature, and how such an understanding is born out by
36
I will use the term arts practice to refer to the notion of a community of individual artists sharing a
common set of tools, values, and discourses. This is always a vague matter, as communities are
unlikely to be in perfect agreement about what constitutes a practice. In certain cases, I use the
plural “art practices” to gesture toward diversity among artists and avoid confusion about my
assumption regarding tradition.
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the first person perspective in practice. This perspective, I will argue, insufficiently
captures characteristics of artistic genius from the perspective of art education.
The study will take the form of a philosophical analysis of one “locus of
signification” I identify as critical in my education as an artist.37 As a method of inquiry,
I deploy philosophy in a way that best suits the subject of my experience. As a departure
from a strictly defined body of literature, this study assumes that a scholarly analysis of
concepts can (and should) proceed from a “critical autobiography,” and this can
successfully be styled as analytic philosophy.38 But this work also has the intent of
making objective claims about the world.39 With the art classroom in mind, I am
interested in the predictive power that could come from understanding how artists
learn from other artists. I believe this relation partakes of more than mere “subjective”
interests; I do not accept that art making is so deeply autobiographical that there is
nothing to guide the work of teaching. Although I share the view that teaching cannot
be reduced to “teaching methods” or strategies (Hansen, 2001), I am interested in
normative truths about art practice that can inform teaching. I assume that my
experience in a collegiate studio art program is common, even if my response of
seeking a finely tuned, philosophical rationale for continuing to make art after
graduation is not.
37
I use the term “locus of signification” to highlight philosophy’s variable function and purpose
across different academic domains. To call it an “entity,” “concept,” “value,” or so forth would oversignify and do an injustice to the genre of writing I am attempting to sustain.
38
For an elegant summary on what is meant by “analytic,” see Leiter (2002) on the difference
between analytic and continental styles of philosophy.
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2.3 My Argument for Artists
Moral truths, although non-relativistic, are usually framed by enculturation
(Haste, 1996), and this means everything that can be a truth about how we live is
framed by our culture—language, habits, customs, activities, and norms. Since this is
so, the problems of moral philosophy can be rendered as matters of education.
Educational philosophy is a discipline that theorizes about the educational aspects of
human actions, attitudes, and values. Moral philosophy, however, does not recede
entirely from view. It concerns historical inquiry about the matter of goodness. Moral
philosophy thus becomes a perspective from which to pose educational questions that
investigate truths about language, habits, customs, and so forth. Likewise,
philosophical anthropology offers resources for this inquiry, albeit as a “meta”
discourse (i.e., “this is how X community viewed the matter of Y”), and such a higherorder discussion could evaluate rival premises and worldviews. The MacIntyrian
perspective I build upon, for example, could be brought under a critical lens in a way
that I will not attempt here.
I approach meta-ethical discourse as a comparative analysis of the
correspondence between humans and their worldviews, and not about rightness or
wrongness according to a restricted, philosophical domain that promises to “determine
39
For a helpful philosophical discussion of objectivity as an ideal, see Nagel (1999).
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a correct course of action” for each situation put to it.40 Virtue ethics, a second-order
project with a strong revival in the second half of the twentieth century, regards the
achievement of an orientation toward the good as the primary telos of human
experience.41 Epistemologically, subordination implies a belief in knowledge that bears
on a “practical” situation, and a concurrent belief that someone else has such
knowledge. A skeptical objection that there is no such knowledge—and therefore no
reasonable desire for such knowledge—must be suspended for my inquiry to continue.
This objection would be too strong, for it appears that people do rely on other people’s
judgments all the time. The act of deferring one’s judgment involves an act of trust—a
belief that there is an end of education at which point a person is qualified to make a
right judgment. We do not have to believe that such judgments will be right for all
time, but it makes sense to think of a student as committed to this image of
subordination. Thus, I am happy to admit that subordination, perceptions of
excellence, and even the concept of genius may be wholly human, and therefore
contingent, matters.
40
The domain of ethics may be best described in this way with respect to education. For example,
Chris Higgins has emphatically pursued this distinction in his work on the “ethics of teaching” as
a matter of teachers’ eudaemonia. For more on this, see Higgins (2003), especially where he refers
to Williams’ (1985) and others’ remarks on this polemic.
41
An obvious counterexample to the claim that virtue ethics is a second-order project would be the
case where philosophy itself is considered as a practice, and a philosopher’s first order of business
was to study virtue. Indeed, we must entertain the possibility that some practices overlap with other
practices. In Chapter V, it will be shown that the practices of teaching and learning are an
example of this overlap, and being too strict about the autonomy of practices comes at too high a
cost. When MacInytre claimed that teaching was not a practice, his critics and allies were quick to
reject his view. They argue that teaching has become a fully-fledged practice in light of its aims,
institutions, rituals, and so on. To see how they responded, see the special issue of The Journal of
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There is a mode of philosophy that sets its goal as doing foundational legwork
for once and all, and philosophical writing in this vein sets the stage for readers to
commence such a task. My ambition is to write for this effect, but not without
acknowledging that for truth to emerge, everyone must do the work for him or herself,
even if this means closely recapitulating the philosophical thinking of others’. The
critique of genius that follows is my own, and its consequences for artists are not yet
clear. The philosophical perspective that emerges from this critique, however, is
potentially useful to artists, educators, and philosophers alike, albeit in different ways.
In the final chapter, therefore, I will discuss the emergent view of genius and its
implications for art education.
2.4 My Aim as a Philosopher of Art Education
This study identifies subordination as an aspect of education in general that
should serve as a point of reference for future pedagogical recommendations. It
assumes that a complex web of values influences every person, and that education is
jointly a process of individual growth and social engagement (Dewey, 1916; Gutmann,
1987). With respect to Dewey’s (1934/1980) view of art and Gadamer’s (1960/2002)
view of tradition, art is posited as an event-object in a relationship-rich world of things.
MacIntyre’s account of morality provides a context for both examining the educative
Philosophy and Education, 37(2). I give my own response to MacIntyre’s view below in Chapter V,
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crosscurrents of art making, and therefore, understanding subordination as one part
of the humanistic project of the human sciences. Flanagan (1991) puts it plainly:
“knowledge in the human sciences—knowledge of ourselves as fallible beings with all
manner of quirks—gives us a certain amount of control over the nature, structure,
and quality of our lives” (p. 314).
Throughout the critique, what are abstract concepts will become better defined
as my critique of genius proceeds from multiple perspectives and develops a narrative
structure. As research, this study interrogates issues surrounding my personal
experiences as an art student. To some, my perspective may seem highly idiosyncratic,
but I suspect it will be familiar to many participants of liberal education. After all, it was
the initial educational outcome of failing to become an artist that motivated my further
philosophical inquiry. As a result of my subsequent introspection, my study situates
itself as a kind of rationale for practicing the arts.42 While my interest in philosophical
inquiry may be exaggerated compared to many “professional” artists, it is an idealistic
articulation of an underlying structure of art practices. In brief, I aim to make
contributions to both moral philosophy and educational philosophy by telling a story
about a kind of activity that is manifest in art.
This study further develops moral theory within the field of art education.
Moral theory is understood to have particular relevance for art practitioners as
Section 3.
42
By acknowledging a Humean skepticism about the limitations of any rationale, I have attempted to
attend to only a part of my own rationale for practicing the arts.
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reflective agents in institutions of liberal education, and those institutions as arenas of
democratic life. In emphasizing the historical dimension of art practices, I expect to
show how a certain configuration of a practitioner’s life can help sustain the ongoing
work of a practice in spite of idiosyncratic perceptions held by student practitioners and
others. A study of subordination is an exploration of the intersection of tradition and
personal narrative in practices. The contingent nature of tradition will be explored as
an overcoming of resistance to historical thinking, and the event of “standing under
tradition” will be considered as an essential aspect of art. This philosophical dialogue
will possibly persuade others to come to an agreement about values as a community
and sustain further dialogue.
Artists, critics, and historians who are interested in “artistic influence” can read
MacIntyre’s account of subordination in practices as an opportunity to systematically
locate the idea of influence in a dialogue oriented toward excellence. Posed as an
extreme example of excellence in art practices, the concept of genius may clarify the
nature of artistic influence. One kind of interpersonal relationship among artists will
be described in greater detail, and this will clarify some of the persistent notions of
artfulness that threaten to close off the domain of art making from students like
myself. Teachers may also benefit from this dialogue. Because teachers are emissaries
of educational institutions, teachers help each student cultivate a balanced response to
his or her self, a practice, and the world. A study of the historically bound concept
“artistic genius” may be a useful evaluative tool for art teachers of all kinds for
considering how they are perceived by students in relation to a practice. This pertains
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especially to teachers in higher education where students confront a clash of artistic
and vocational drives.
One reason art teachers need a deep understanding of genius is that they must
be proactive proponents of excellence.43 No antidote for skepticism about one’s self is
readily available in art education. Passing off anxiety about genius as a “personal”
problem underplays the concept’s rich history and relationship to the arts—a
conversation that could be brought into art classrooms where students struggle.
Artistic creation is connected to at least as many features of the world as there are
human in it, and the significance of this diversity should not be diminished. The tradeoff—having no pretension of crafting a strictly universal theory of genius—is made for
the sake of crafting a useful theory. My aim in conceptualizing genius from the
perspective of art education is, therefore, for art educators and their students. Part II
begins this conceptualization by arguing that genius should be seen as a more intimate
recognition of an artist’s relation to a tradition of practice.
3. Limitations
Without a concern for moral philosophy, my argument would go as follows: I
argue for a provisional definition of genius as an ideal relationship between an
43
It would be interesting (as well as difficult) to measure this view’s impact on education. The
philosophical legwork I am undertaking here is merely propaedeutic to this sort of fully-fledged
naturalistic inquiry.
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individual and tradition. Hermeneutics helps define the ideal as a balance between
presentism and historicism during the work of “understanding.” I support this
argument with several points, making my case for the provisional definition to be the
preferred definition. I show that 1) the notion of genius is historically associated with
the arts; 2) activities like art making are best understood as “practices;” 3) practices are
considered a source of “morality;” 4) we prefer the products of artists who stand under
tradition; and 5) genius is wrongly thought to be a matter of originality without due
consideration of the role of tradition. In the actual arrangement, I have tried to capture
the implications of this definition for moral philosophy. Although I had hoped the
resulting argument (about both morality and moral philosophy) would make the
argument for reconceptualizing genius stronger, and vice versa, I am not sure it has
this effect. What counts as evidence, and for what argument, is too easily confused,
and it is left to the charitable reader to both follow the logic and arrive at meaningful
conclusions from the shifting terrain of “educational theory.”
While my experience of art education (especially in the college classroom)
ultimately frames one view of art making at a nexus of critical, moral, and educational
philosophy, there are implications for philosophy. Gadamer’s hermeneutic theory of
tradition and MacIntyre’s tripartite theory of moral life are frameworks for seeing the
significance of genius within a horizon that includes Kant and his conceptual legacy.44 I
44
Gadamer (2002) describes the subjectivization of aesthetics largely through his depiction of the
concept of genius in opposition to the methodological structure of the natural sciences. While I
find this argument constructive from a hermeneutic point of view, I am reminded by Gadamer’s
own theory of understanding that the resulting instrumental portrayal of genius need not obscure
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provide, however, no foundational argument for this philosophical perspective. The
process of making meaning—where autobiographical continuity is expected—trumps
the objection that a tautology underlies this interpretation of a concept. From the
perspective of current work in meta-ethics, therefore, it is defanged as a work of
criticism. From the perspective of art education, it is propaedeutic to criticism. From an
autobiographical perspective, its critical function is scholarship. Read in this way, I
hope a charitable reader will reconsider theorizing as research. For my part, I will
engage a wide community of thinkers to avoid the perils of philosophical solipsism—
although this is never reassuring as it should be.
Robbie McClintock’s (2004) essay on the academic study of education highlights
this study’s potential in three distinct modes: scholarship, research, and criticism.
Concept formations of the kind I am undertaking could potentially be carried out
within an academic discipline as a “disinterested” study of education—which he
describes as contributing no direct professional recommendations—but this
community is underrepresented and not well supported in modern universities
(McClintock, 2004). My study will not be so disinterested. As I have hinted at above, it
will be applied to the “field” of studio art. Unfortunately, I am writing for a discipline
area that suffers from an over-professionalized and under-theorized existence.
artists’ work. For artists whose work can be construed as an expression of human science, the
matter of genius is very much alive and not to be ignored simply because it has been understood
differently in contrast to objectivity in the natural sciences.
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3.1 Moralities and Languages
As one approaches the concept of morality, one must keep the milieu of human
experience in view. Philosophers seeking applications for finely tuned moral theories
(or those finely-tuning moral theories for application) are likely to forget these
complexities. Philosophy need not be inapplicable, but practitioners of philosophy (of all
kinds and abilities) should heed the importance of nuance. This is a troubling
proposition for many philosophers and scientists who regard truth as a matter of
subjecting succinct and isolable events to highly objective processes of verification. Yet
as difficult as it is to secure truth by the methods I have chosen, those under sway of a
perversely technological notion of progress should not inconsiderately brush
alternative (and similarly sophisticated) methods aside. Although my subject matter is
not atoms, molecules, chemical structures, or the stars, but the human event of
genius, I am similarly interested in truth. A limitation of the study, therefore, is my
ability to summon the methodological resources of my own choosing to serve two
masters: they must be sufficiently rigorous in order to tell the truth, and they must be
sufficiently “open” to serve as an invitation for my colleagues, wherever and whomever
they may be, to “verify” my findings.
A current tendency is to assume that “genius” refers to a kind of person, but
this was not always the case. And it is not agreed upon, even today, in what way a
person qualifies a genius. Furthermore, a common appeal in the artworld is to equate a
consistent output of a certain kind of product with a permanent (or durable)
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characteristic of the creator of those products (Stern, 1971). A key distinction that is
called for is whether or not “artistic genius” is understood as a character trait, a sum
total of a person’s traits, or something else. There are merits to all these ways of talking
about genius. When I use the term as I do in the dissertation title, I simply mean to
regard artists who are ordinarily recognized as “geniuses” and make a universalizing
statement. The universal concept cannot be shown to hold in all cases, and it is not
meant to. It is, however, argued by me to make sense of most cases, and to the
exclusion of cases where I argue that it was misattributed in the first place. If it were
shown to be the case that, in fact, most cases are not well-described by the term
“genius,” then it will have been proven wrong to call it such. This would indicate deeper
problems for my argument, such as whether or not I can rightly criticize MacIntyre for
misunderstanding the role of subordination in moral life, whether Kant is wrong for
depicting genius as a matter of originality, or whether genius can rightly said to have a
moral nature at all.
Concepts influence behavior, and should be understood to be “things in the
world” about which there can be an objective truth (Kitcher, 1992; Garver, 1986;
Eames, 1977).45 Truth may emerge from different cultures and languages, but it is not
45
Values are constituted by and constitutive of many unseen things (customs, culture, beliefs, rational
thoughts, and so on). It is a tenet of value theory—a mode of moral philosophy—that principled
actions are made possible by values. Though I recognize the need for more clarification about the
concept of values, I will instead offer clarification about the notion of practice in Chapter V, Section
1.
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relativistic.46 It is objective in the sense that it aspires to be universal. Philosophy, it can
thus be said, is usually written in a “thin” language, without the full burden of the
minute details of experience. The hope is that readers will be persuaded to do the work
of translating abstractions back into the “thick” languages of experience.
3.2 Disciplinary Boundaries
There are a number of lenses for understanding genius that I will not entertain
here, such as the matters of luck and “talent.” These are, admittedly, powerful
frameworks for understanding genius—and I will attend to them when they loom
especially large—but I will not pretend to treat them at all comprehensively. Theorizing
a moral conception of genius means leaving these lenses behind, even if they helpfully
fill out a broader conception of genius. I study genius at the intersection of moral
philosophy and art education, and a major theme of this interdisciplinary area is
internal motivation for engaging the act of artistic creation. Hence, I want to dispose
straightaway with external motivations, internal motivations for engaging other tasks,
and non-motivational matters.
46
Relativism often follows on the heels of “subjectivity,” but naturalism eschews it. My view of
subjectivity as a natural part of the world is not novel, but perhaps it is not often put so succinctly.
What exactly constitutes nature has been debated from the nineteenth century onwards (and all
the way back to ancient Greece, if one allows for post-Enlightenment prejudices). I see Gadamer’s
(2002) discussion of language as partially redressing this matter. For more on “situatedness,” which
is another name for the belief that culture “goes all the way down,” see Greene (1995), especially
her description of the “shapes of childhood” (p. 73-86).
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For some, my work will suffer the comparison to previous explorations of
genius as creativity. But I intend my work as another matter. For example, Gruber’s
work on creativity—his evolving systems approach and the case studies he and his
students develop—is concerned with a sufficiently different matter than artistic genius.
First of all, he studies all kinds of eminent individuals. Secondly, his case study method
does not have a principled method for defining eminence as genius after
Romanticism—its foundation is commensurate with a normative conception of
creativity. It is the articulation of just such a principled view of genius that my critique
aims to generate. Where Gruber detects methods in artists’ creative processes, his
work should be understood as recommending examples of art practice. The concept of
genius has a much more expansive history than can be gathered by a few examples, or
even a single philosophical perspective. As such, my critique is self-consciously related
to art education as a strategy for bounding the concept in a productive way.
I hope to summon an audience that does not readily exist by calling attention to
what this project offers. My colleagues are art educators who value the emphasis liberal
education places on inquiry. While I have culled my scholarship primarily from
literatures surrounding the problem of artistic genius—interpreting this as a
framework for educational matters in the studio art classroom—this is also a study in
moral philosophy. As philosophy, my study will be seen as risking an approach to too
small a problem from too parochial a perspective. This is a necessary limitation, and
philosophy has much potential with this scope and on this scale—despite any such
project’s narrow appeal. My project is not an exercise in aesthetic philosophy (nor, if
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there is indeed a difference, philosophy of art). It does not sustain a focus that would
appeal to art historians. It is not general enough to interest moral philosophers with a
broad interest in virtue ethics (MacIntyre scholars will likely find it too technical, or
worse, torturously long-winded). And it is too far a field for mainstream educational
philosophers. Lacking a ready-made audience, I undertake ethical and educational
projects simultaneously, and write with art educators in mind.
A weakness of philosophical argumentation with multiple theoretical premises
is that it will be unwieldy to disprove it. What is to be done? Theories are often thought
to need to be “surrounded” by empirical evidence, but they can also simply become
“useful” (in a Pragmatic sense). I hope for both these outcomes to be possible, but I
have aimed more at the latter and have delved into several topical discourses to renew
interest in the meaning of artistic genius from an educational perspective. After
proposing a hermeneutic theory of subordination in Part II, which I argue shapes
artists’ perceptions of other artists and their work, I turn to Kant’s philosophy in Part
III to test the outcome of this critique.
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PART II–HOW WE THINK ABOUT ARTISTS
The audience as understander, attempting an exact
reconstruction in its own mind of the artist's imaginative
experience, is engaged on an endless quest. It can carry
out this reconstruction only in part. This looks as if the
artist were a kind of transcendent genius whose meaning
is always too profound for his audience of humbler
mortals to grasp in a more than fragmentary way. And an
artist inclined to give himself airs will no doubt interpret
the situation like that. But another interpretation is
possible. The artist may take his audience's limitations
into account when composing his work; in which case
they will appear to him not as limitations on the extent to
which his work will prove comprehensible, but as
conditions determining the subject-matter or meaning of
the work itself… We have inherited a long tradition,
beginning in the late eighteenth century with the cult of
'genius', and lasting all through the nineteenth, which is
inimical to this.
R. G. Collingwood, 1938/1958, pp. 311.
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IV–SOCIAL DIMENSIONS OF MORALITY
1. Lessons From Psychology
The matter of saintliness affords us a glimpse of genius through a moral lens,
but I want to continue to resist a narrow moral perspective. Psychological literature has
multiple avenues for framing the concept of genius, so the difficulty will be in applying
existing research to the task of securing a relation between genius and artists’ practices.
In his book Varieties of Moral Personality: Ethics and Psychological Realism, Owen
Flanagan (1991) calls for a psychologically realistic ethical theory, and this will serve as a
contribution to a hermeneutic view of genius.
Starting from ethical and psychological discourses, Flanagan depicts a spectrum
of personality types, and he shows how those types hang together as a rich variety of
human lives. In contrast to virtue ethicists who Flanagan sees as trying to link good
action and good character, and instead of an act-based psychological account that
supposes a minimal set of moral principles from which good action flows, he argues
that there can be no single theory of morally good character (Flanagan, 1991, pp. 331-
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332). Understanding this characteristic of moral theory, which is often posed as an
inadequacy, is the purpose of this chapter.
Posing genius as a personality trait establishes the scope of an exploration of the
moral nature of genius by setting parameters for moral theory. To this effect,
psychologists make an important distinction between an intrapersonal and
interpersonal dimension of personality that contributes to standards such as moral
goodness (Flanagan, 1991). Precisely because this distinction is so difficult to maintain
in actual evaluations of persons, psychologists remain skeptical about the boundaries of
moral theory. Here, I explore the limits of philosophy, especially in regard to the
interpersonal side of moral philosophy. This may prove to be useful elsewhere for
experimentally testing the incidence of the concept of genius I go on to describe in
Chapter V and Chapter VI.
2. Attribution Theory
According to Flanagan (1991), “the links between internal psychological features
and actions are exceedingly complex and multiply tracked” (p. 331). For the purpose of
better representing reality with theory, he says, “we need a better moral psychology, one
that does not naturally fit either of the main traditions available to us” (p. 12). By this,
he means that philosophy has not yet adequately rendered the human mind in a
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comprehensible and systematic way. He views philosophy in a similar way, though not
quite as disparagingly, as Eysenck (1995) who says:
[In philosophy] words like ‘imagination,’ ‘insight’ and so forth are sprayed about
without definition, without possibility of measurement, without forming a
testable theory, or even usually a comprehensive one… Philosophers seldom
take kindly to such [criticism], and point to the obvious imperfections of
scientific measure, particularly in its early stages. They look with amusement at
our attempts to measure creativity, or intuition. (p. 4)
The rival traditions of moral theory Flanagan seeks to go beyond represent two
models of goodness and, therefore, two ideals of moral excellence. I will place these
traditions in a greater historical context in the following section, but even a cursory
description suggests the greater contours of the often-contested ground of moral
philosophy. Flanagan (1991) describes these traditions as follows:
One is the model of the principled reasoner who applies some supreme generalpurpose algorithm to all moral problems. The other is the model of the morally
excellent person as the fully virtuous person. (p. 11)
In other words, he finds both deontological and virtue-based approaches to ethics
unsatisfying. Starting from these perspectives, Flanagan is able to prioritize his interest
in ethics from the bottom up—from personalities to social evaluation. This is an
enviable position from the perspective of moral philosophers who do not distinguish
between absolute and contingent aspects of morality. Psychologists who start by
assessing connections between thought and action are able to secure a foundation for
morality that will suggest the proper use of the theory later on. This is important for a
reconceptualization of genius because it may suggest a particular way to view
supererogation, thereby revealing how such a moral ideal may be achieved.
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2.1 Epistemic Foundations of Morality
“Ethics” is a broad domain of philosophizing about a wide range of ideas and
problems. Not all work in ethics is about the same thing, and traditions have formed
around various threads of inquiry. Thus, there is a “deontological” tradition grounded
in Kant’s inquiry, a “utilitarian” tradition grounded in Bentham and Mill’s inquiry, and
a “virtue ethics” tradition grounded in Aristotle’s inquiry. There are other traditions,
including offshoots and schematically similar (but differently described) traditions, but
these are arguably the “Big Three”—and they are rival traditions. 47 That they are rivals
means, partly, that they do not agree on what counts as ethics even though they use
much of the same language, and partly that they agree on what counts and disagree
about its meaning or importance. All three theories differ as to what “knowledge of
morality” should and does refer.
I am committed to invoking the tradition of virtue ethics in the case of genius,
but I agree with Flanagan that it is not yet a complete theory. It may be currently useful
only within philosophy—to help secure a framework for discussing philosophical
problems. As such, it can be useful in the way it was useful for me as an art student
groping for a rationale, but remain at the margins of wider discussions of moral
excellence. Many philosophers remain unconvinced of its truth, and this would not be
a problem were it not for the fact that they are convinced that other traditions better
47
For more on these rival traditions, see MacIntyre (1988).
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describe (and resolve) the problems virtue ethics seeks to describe and resolve.48 More
agreement among philosophers on the best organization of the domain of ethics is
needed—concessions should be made on both sides to allow for moral knowledge that
intersects with other domains of knowledge and human activity. Since moral
knowledge is widely thought to affect work in politics, science, religion, and other
spheres, its refinement will be an important philosophical contribution.49
Flanagan believes a psychological perspective can help sharpen the debate
surrounding the issue of moral excellence, and specifically, help define virtue. Adding
to the difficulty of improving moral theory, virtue is a key term in the discussion of
morality across traditionary boundaries. According to the deontological tradition, for
example, an excellent person is someone who can be said to have some kind of
intellectual virtue. Virtue ethics generally entails something more like a “unity” of
virtues—a unity that often includes intellectual virtues, but necessarily encompasses
many others. Both traditions beg the question of what constitutes virtue (or a virtue),
and this question looms large over those philosophical projects. Indeed, such a
question returns ethical and moral theorizing to its roots; but such foundational
48
For example, according to Scanlon’s (1998) “contractualist” view, I can rightly ground my rationale
for making art on a justification that others cannot reasonably reject. According to this view,
however, cases of supererogation must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Part of the value of
virtue ethics, therefore, is the central role of supererogation.
49
My side interests in politics and religion does not do justice to where I fall along the timeworn
polemic of philosophy between the two poles of “human matters” and the “hard facts” of nature.
With a deep interest in the work of science, I believe that virtue ethics can be seen as a bridge
between the human sciences and the natural sciences. For more on this compatibility of these
paradigms of knowledge, see Crease (1997), Skinner (1990), Polkinghorne (1983), and Gadamer
(1960/2002).
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concerns are, for Flanagan, out of place in the present. He puts forward the view that a
differentiated notion of excellence is essential to ethics. For example, he says that if we
start by conceiving of the ideal of excellence as constituted by principles, then we have
already restricted the domain of morality too much—precluding ethics from identifying
and categorizing diverse ways of life that are already commonly understood as excellent.
This is reminiscent of Wolf’s concern for “nonmoral” excellences, recast as a matter of
personality.
For psychologists, personality refers to individuals’ deep-seated psychological
processes as well as differences between individuals. Many theories of thought and
behavior fall under this branch of psychology, and a view of genius could be construed
in many ways as a matter of personality. For the purposes of the present study, a few
key insights about personality theories in general may serve as a useful corrective for
moral theory. Some psychological research recommends choosing an explanatory
“level” for thinking about artists, and this points to attribution theory as a helpful
framework. How we make attributions about personality has consequences for
attributions about supererogation. But excellence, according to Flanagan, should be
only partly understood as a result of personality—this is an outcome of his
psychological portrayal of “minimal persons”—and this sets the stage for looking at
education in practices from a social perspective.
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2.2 Minimal Persons
For psychologists, the broad topic of morality evokes numerous theoretical
lenses. Theorizing may take into account behavior, situations, dispositions, and traits
as well as broader concepts such as identity, desire, cognition, and so on. But broad
frameworks need not be cast as unifying frameworks, and a lack of unity may even be
preferable from the perspective of theory. Flanagan (1991) puts this soberly enough:
The usefulness of distinguishing among different explanatory levels designed to
capture phenomena and regularities occurring and emerging at different planes
is widely accepted as methodologically sound in the philosophy of mind, in
psychology, and in cognitive science. (p. 136)
To set the stage for explanatory divergence, Flanagan outlines and defends a
theory of personality—a theory of “minimal persons”—that cogently accommodates a
wide range of theories of personality while limiting the impact of the first person view
of a concept such as genius from the outset. That is, third person views may involve
first person views, and an evaluative framework may be compromised by tendencies
such as self-defense or self-aggrandizement. From a psychological perspective, an
argument for distinctiveness among persons is needed to guard against the theoretical
mistake of collapsing the idea of “personality” with a disembodied social norm. This
protects against a self-sealed view of geniuses. The matter at hand, then, is why moral
theory must have a psychological account of personhood, and I will continue this
discussion below and again in Chapter V.
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The theory of minimal persons supports the view that persons are separate and
have distinctive points of view—a matter that partly undermines moral theory’s
impulse to support a social agenda. Without an adequate account of supererogation,
virtue ethics may appear to have this impulse. If it did, it would attest to the fact that
individuals’ autonomy to choose a way of life is diminished against the rush to achieve
excellence of any kind (or a specific kind). We do not need to go as far as virtue
theorists, however, to imagine an intellectual virtue of some kind that settles and
orders individuals’ social orientations—we can explain the diversity of human lives and
ends along with a different explanation of how those ends are achieved.
Flanagan’s (1991) portrait of minimal persons emerges from several premises:
1) “minimal persons consciously bear the information about themselves that they are
conscious subjects of experience” (p. 63); 2) minimal persons are “intentional systems”
(p. 63); and 3) minimal persons care about “the satisfaction of their desires over time”
(p. 64). In effect, it is just this kind of account that MacIntyre calls “the narrative order
of a single human life,” though for MacIntyre this picture of the individual occupies a
different theoretical space. I will not attempt to elaborate (or untangle) his particular
vision here, even as it may adequately serve the same purpose as a theory of minimal
persons, it is burdened by a developmental picture of virtue Flanagan’s theory eschews.
For Flanagan, the three-pronged theory of personality is self-evident and sufficient as a
framework for considering behaviors that are believed to have a moral valence.
Drawing a conclusion from the principle of minimal psychological realism, Flanagan
(1991) invites philosophers to consider diverse ends of moral evaluation:
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Good lives cannot be envisaged, nor can they be created and sustained, without
paying attention to what goes on outside the agent—to the multifarious
interactive relations between individual psychology and the natural and social
environments. (p. 312)
A minimal person viewed apart from a larger context is a barren place for
morality to reside. Though persons need not be minimal in any finite sense, Flanagan’s
conveyance of the potential of persons offers a sensible approach to the problem of
genius. The identification of genius can be taken up at the intersection of the
“intrapersonal” (whether this is expressed as desire, intention, or simply awareness)
and the “extrapersonal”—on an interpersonal ground. The theory of minimal persons
helps locate interpersonal aspects of personality, and recommends a third person
perspective for conceptualizing moral ideals.
It seems uncontroversial that good lives cannot be envisaged without attending
to the world beyond the individual, but then this statement also implies that some sort
of attentiveness is essential to the bringing about of good lives. The extent that such
knowledge is enviable or necessary was left underdetermined by the theory of minimal
persons. Here, the strong claim is not as interesting as the weak one. The weak claim
seems to be that living well requires introspection and observation of the external
world. Following the discussion of traits as useful and flexible dispositional “packages,”
this claim begs the question of who or what can and cannot pass as good based on
patterns of behavior and assumptions about personality. This is evocative of other
questions Flanagan seeks to answer, such as, “What kind of introspection and
observation is passable as the bedrock of morality?” and, “Must we be morality–minded
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to partake of the good life?” If answered in the affirmative, the latter question cuts too
harshly against Wolf’s intuition that a saint need not actively conceptualize a moral
framework for his actions to be counted as good. The importance of the third person
perspective suggests that morality is likely to be swayed by interpersonal matters.
Traitology, the psychological study of personality as constituted by deep-seated and
persistent dispositions, thus emerges as one potentially powerful foundational pillar of
moral philosophy.
2.3 Attribution Biases
Attribution theory gives a “more general and unified account of how we in fact
think about persons—in both first person and third person situations” (Flanagan,
1991, p. 311). It tempers to what degree genius can be considered objectively real at an
intersection of behavior and social values. It is also particularly relevant when popular
opinion about persons is taken seriously and at face value. Psychology literature
explores attribution theory from many angles, and Flanagan highlights three biases in
attributing traits as most applicable to moral theory: 1) overestimation of dispositional
factors in general, 2) overestimation of dispositional factors from the third person
point of view, and 3) a self-serving bias. In this section the significance of these biases
in the way people characterize the behavior of others is elaborated for the purpose of
anticipating how genius might be attributed.
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Hypotheses about both dispositional and situation factors contribute to
observations about personality. Dispositional factors are the result of existing patterns
of behavior or habits, whereas situational factors are the result of an external,
changing environment. An important observation from the perspective of
psychological research is about the “folk psychology” tendency to “overestimate the
impact of dispositional factors and to underestimate situational ones” (Flanagan, 1991,
p. 306) when judging moral personality.50 It seems one reason to be skeptical or
eliminativist about traits is that people in general are likely to overlook the importance
of situations on behavior and rush to judgment about the presence of a trait. It is
therefore likely that genius is too often attributed to a person as a fundamental
disposition, and recognitions of excellence may be wrongly associated with matters of
disposition in general. For psychologists who acknowledge the force and utility of the
concept of traits, the mistake to be avoided here is wrongly attributing traits by relying
on an unrepresentative sample of behavior. Thus, observations of excellence over time
serves as a better indication of genius as a trait.51
Another aspect of attribution that is manifest in experimental research is an
individual’s tendency to more often describe the behavior of others’ as the result of
dispositions than one’s own behavior (Jones & Nisbett, 1971), as cited in Flanagan
50
For more on this characteristic of attribution, see Ross’ (1977) work on Fundamental Attribution
Tendency (cited in Flanagan, 1991, pp. 305-311).
51
I treat “recognition” and “attribution” as the same, though there is a shift of emphasis about an
agent’s judgment. This is technical point, but an important distinction in psychoanalytic literature
rests on the two-way relationship implied by recognition.
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(1991, p. 309). When pushed for an explanation, it seems we rely less on traitology
when it comes to our own behavior because of the following asymmetry:
In many cases we have much more information, and thus better predictive data,
about ourselves than about third parties and thus can dispense more easily with
the summarizing trait apparatus in our own cases. (p. 310)
Flanagan sees this bias as a corollary of the tendency to overestimate dispositional
factors, and it highlights a purpose of traits as a way to summarize a view of a person.
It stands to reason that one may attribute genius as a trait to a third party as the result
of a lack of information similar to the information one has about one’s self. For
example, if a person has very little experience in the arts, even mediocre artistic
achievements may elicit veneration.
Another intriguing psychological phenomenon—especially intriguing in a
discussion of exceptional moral personalities—is the bias we have identifying behaviors
as representative of traits when this serves our own interests (Schoeman, 1987). While
this is shown to manifest itself in situations where we can impute positive traits to
ourselves, it may be that we also act out of self-interest when attributing traits to
others. For example, Gauguin’s exodus to Tahiti may earn him increased recognition as
an artistic genius (beyond his ability to paint with secondary colors) because it distanced
him from social norms. That is, it may serve the interest of non-artists to distance
themselves from the work of artists—essentially relinquishing them from the task of
painting (Alicke, et al., 1997). Though this is not a clear-cut example, it speaks to the
difficulty of parsing trait biases when the complex matter of identity is involved. The
codification of genius as a trait (or certain traits as genius) may regulate a normative
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conception of excellence, thereby decreasing expectations for one’s self and recasting
behavior in an acceptable way (relative to other non-geniuses).
Both the self-serving bias and the fact that we are not as likely to ascribe our
own behaviors to traits raise skepticism about supererogation. We need not dismiss
popular opinion so much as qualify it in the aforementioned ways. Due to these biases,
the historical turn from the view of genius as a feature of artistic experience to that of
genius as a “global” character trait of certain persons cannot be seen as entirely
rational.52 Furthermore, because traitology exists at the level of folk psychology, a
philosophical discussion of genius as a trait may simply contribute to an understanding
of competing conceptions of genius. To delve into the implications of traitology for
artists, we need to consider how conceptions of excellence are influenced at the level of
folk psychology.
3. The Third Person Perspective
There are several important implications for genius as a trait observed from the
third person perspective. Because of errors in the way traits are recognized, it is
possible that genius is wrongly attributed to persons. Even if the trait of genius was
52
The shifting emphasis on genius as a trait coincides with the rise of individualism in western
cultures and the concurrent development of art making as a practice. I will not discuss the meaning
of this historical circumstance here, but for a detailed analysis of the rise of individualism, see
Taylor (1989), especially Part II: Inwardness.
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shown to exist in some meaningful sense, the tendency to undervalue situational
factors makes attributions that are not checked for error doubtful. One person’s
opinion is not going to help us determine if a trait is present, so consensus may be a
useful tool for identifying genius. But problems may persist especially if, for example,
different conceptualizations of a trait hinder attribution. Likewise, observing
situational behavior is not in itself indicative of traits, but a baseline along which traits
may be said to occur. If genius is shown to be manifest in the works of art a person
produces, then we should look for repetition of artistic output—a single instance of
production is not good evidence for the presence of a trait. These situations point to
the need for a well-articulated view of genius from the third person perspective, and
the resulting assurance will come at the cost of placing less value on the meaning of art
practice for the artist.
That traits are manifest over time plays to the hand of the saint, who, for one
reason or another, is narrowly focused on a particular behavior. As Wolf shows us, a
person may naturally exhibit a behavior that is demonstrable of saintliness, and this
may be more or less a matter of luck. It could also be a matter of actively choosing to
behave a certain way, but this internal difference is lost when viewed from the third
person perspective. There are, therefore, several places to look for traits, such as in a
person’s actions or in the product of their actions. Looking between the person and the
products is possible: a trait or traits both make certain products visible (valued) and
also make certain (but minimal) actions appear related to those products. Consensus
building via corroboration is further brought into question by the phenomenon of “in-
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group thinking” (Flanagan, 1991, p, 311). Observations of in-group thinking tells us
that if it is somehow useful to artists that some artists are considered geniuses, then
consensuses on particular cases may be biased in favor of identifying that trait. If third
person experience is accepted as a reasonable vantage from which to identify genius,
then there need be additional checks against in-group bias.53
About the matter of the third person perspective in general, there is a
significant tension that arises between social psychological literature and MacIntyre’s
theory of virtue in practices. Since MacIntyre claims individuals external to a practice
cannot judge the goods internal to a practice (discussed below in Chapter V, Section
2.2), and since genius may arise in a way that is only practice-specific, his theory is
resistant to the checks and balances that broad consensus about genius requires. This
matter does not affect all aspects of the conceptualization of genius equally, and since I
am not set on measuring the frequency of genius in the general population, it is not a
great concern here. It may also be that a third person perspective within a practice is
deemed sufficient despite of in-group bias. This it does call for skepticism about traits
in general, and I will return to this matter in Chapter V.
53
Hugo Ortega-Lopez brought my attention to how Modigliani’s relationship with Picasso is a telling
example here (personal communication, February 15, 2006). Modigliani persisted making paintings
despite widely held doubt (but not his own) that his genius was inferior to Picasso’s. We cannot
know exactly why he persisted to produce art in spite of the lack of support from the art community,
but his artwork is testament to his own conviction of the importance of his work. We should not be
surprised then, if, just as Modigliani had surmised, Picasso’s last spoken word was “Modigliani.” To
achieve the recognition that he was indeed the greater artist, did Modigliani simply have to be
immune to external recognition? Could Picasso not doubt such a strong conviction? Perhaps he felt
the abundance of external recognition he received somewhat disqualified his own status as a
genius compared to Modigliani’s less recognized but similarly productive behavior. This is only
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Psychologists push back skepticism about traits by appealing to the utility of
observations, and they talk about traits in everyday life. Thus, the tentative and
pragmatic nature of traitology allows for theorizing about traits. Even if a persistent,
shared, and identifiable aspect of personality eventually showed itself to be temporary or
situational, attribution theory helps us understand the changing nature of traits. But
the matter of biases and the discussion of strategies for rightly identifying traits only
offers indirect clues as to whether genius is or is not a trait or set of traits. Insights
from psychological research have been merely propaedeutic to a reconceptualization of
genius, steering philosophy through some of the difficulties of morality.
3.1 Genius as a Trait
If genius were a trait, repeat observations and corroboration about those
observations would be a reasonable basis for judgment, but a vicious circle should still
be avoided. It is all too easy to follow folk psychology into an endless cycle of
observation and definition, without controlling for the attribution biases described
above. A sensible conclusion is to trust third person observations of genius, but to
withhold judgment about whether the trait is recurrent, and therefore a persistent
aspect of personality. We do not also want to suppose a direct correlation between the
frequency of one’s artistic production and genius, or suggest that repetition is essential
speculation. But it does suggest the power of recognition is not unappreciated by artists, and also
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to genius. 54 On the other hand, the matter of unrealized traits potentially defies
traitology, for psychologists have no choice but to be silent about the status of
unobservable phenomena. One purpose of the reconceptualization of genius within a
morla framework is to agree on what counts as the deep-seated nature of genius.
Two main premises of this study are thus: 1) there exist measures of human
aptitude in art practice such that certain individuals excel when others do not, and 2)
folk psychology contributes to the recognition of certain artists as exceptional and,
potentially (though not always uncontroversially), as geniuses. Traitology and its
implications set us on course to better explain genius on many levels. And while there
are numerous ways to approach (and analyze) excellence in art practices (as well as
analyze the meaning of artistic excellence in light of other practices and social
structures), the adoption of the framework suggested above—a third person
perspective moderated by a weak view of intrapersonal attribution—narrows the focus
of moral philosophy. Indeed, it may be that once the biases of attribution are controlled
for, there is nothing left to explain—genius may simply not be a substantive aspect of
that the fate (and horror) of genius being overlooked (by a community) is real.
54
See Albert (1983), especially Chapter 1, for an overview of how psychologists are (or have been)
committed to the project of measuring genius alongside eminence with quantitative instruments.
Since there is a strong identification of geniuses as people who have been widely perceived as
geniuses, the sample for determining the IQs of geniuses and eminent individuals is both
warranted and suspect. I believe the correlation between “creative productivity” and high IQs is
better understood only as eminence. I worry that considering genius as such would treat tradition as
too “thin.” Tradition is more complex, and this may lead to philosophical confusion about the role
of either coming to an agreement or the traditionary events as overarching aims of ethics. In fact,
these are only two goals among many, and they are not the only goals in service of inquiry. I will
discuss tradition at length in Chapter VI, Section 2.
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personality. Chapter V turns to the matter of education in practices in general with this
possibility in view.
Considering the drawbacks of a study about focusing on the importance of a
misunderstood or misleading concept, perhaps it is best to remain skeptical about
genius as a trait. At some point, a student of art chooses whether to take art seriously
as a vocation, to make art “on the side,” or not at all. It is possible, however, to
appreciate the nuances of artists’ lives without understanding what choosing art
making as a way of life involves, and, on this view, the point of conceptualizing genius
as a trait is to better understand this part of our social landscape. As an undergraduate,
it was not the case that I wanted to be an artistic genius. I wanted foresight about
whether to make art practice a greater or lesser part of my life.
There is philosophic work left to be done to explain how a trait such as genius
relates to art practice, such as 1) looking closely at traits as a source of excellence, and
2) looking at excellence anew from the perspective of art education. To relocate the
concept away from its roots in folk psychology, the first step will be locating a salient
aspect of art practice with the historical concept of genius in mind. To that end,
Chapters V and VI focus on subordination as a particular and narrow aspect of art
practice that, while not the only important aspect, concieves of artistic production from
a hermeneutic point of view.
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4. Conclusion
Traitology has several implications for a critique of genius. It offers a way to a
parse third person views of genius from first person experience; it reveals how
perceptions of morality may change dependant upon one’s perspective; and it shows
that genius may be theorized as one aspect of personality because of a predisposition to
summarize others’ behaviors. Accordingly, there is no reason to think that genius, like
other traits, is any less “real” than other features of the human world. This suggests a
way ahead.
We could restrict considerations about genius to recurrent cognitive
phenomena that are likely to lead to attributions from the third person perspective.
This is, in effect, what psychologists do (Eysenck, 1995). Adopting this perspective
means that our interest in first person experience will be minimal—but related to
specific aspects of art practice. Turning to first person experience, however, allows us
to remaining skeptical about traitology while privileging the perspective of artists. In
effect, psychology sharpens conjecture about the relation between personality and
typology, while the issue of luck still looms large. Insofar as we want to understand
underlying patterns of behavior that lead to the recognition of genius, we have to
theorize much more slowly. As I suggested in Chapter II, MacIntyre’s theory discloses
an aspect of practice that plays a central role in the achievement of excellence in
practices: subordination. In the next chapter, I argue that subordination is a key
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concept in moral theory cum educational theory, and as such, it lends itself to a
powerful explanation of genius.
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V–ACHIEVEMENT OF SUBORDINATION
1. Excellence in Practices
If genius is seen as a trait, the social world is a more complex space for artists to
navigate. Philosophers, artists, and everyone else who enters into dialogues about art
are confronted with summarizing descriptions of artists that inform encounters with
art and artists. As a result, psychologists are more likely to take seriously claims about
genius that arise in this socially-negotiated manner than, for example, claims by artists
about themselves. But discussion about genius is likely to bear out speculation about
development and growth, and here the artist may be at an advantage, for it is she who
may be most familiar with the complexities of art practice. And though we may be
suspicious of an artist’s view of herself (due to the biases of the first person
perspective), artists’ views of each other may deserve a special status when compared to
“outsiders’” observations.
An artist’s perspective differs somewhat from an outsider’s perspective. A
notable feature of the artist’s perspective is that it cannot be said to exist prior to a
practice of art making—it is coextensive with it. While third person perspectives could
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be understood as locating and describing artistic experience, views of artistic excellence
that arise from observation alone, and not “hands-on” experience, are likely to vary
according to a particular point of view. A political theorist or activist, for example,
might be inclined to judge artistic excellence according to the political value of an
artwork. Artists, we may conclude, are a more reliable source for determining artistic
excellence because their judgment is grounded in artistic experience. Yet this begs the
question of what should be understood as a valid rubric for excellence—many interests
can be understood as competing for justification. How justification is thought to
proceed may hinge upon whether excellence may be understood to reside in artists, or it
may be understood to reside in works of art. In the first case, an artist could be
rightfully called a genius were she to be known to have good intentions. The latter case
could go as follows: if the public reception of a work of art were to be said to matter for
the determination of how “good” it is, and the recognition of genius is dependant upon
art being deemed good, then the excellence of an artist is essentially contingent upon
the reception of her work. Art criticism oscillates between these two poles, and debates
in aesthetics often hinge on where critics fall along this spectrum. Essentially, this is an
interminable debate from a theoretical point of view.
To say that we are interested in genius from a “moral perspective” means we
come down on the side that privileges the experience of artists, if only provisionally—
provisional because a relation to artworks plays an important role in one’s identification
as an artist, but there is a point beyond which it no longer makes sense to demand this
correlation. That is, there exists a class of objects that count as artworks, and we
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rightfully refer to it when we identify artists, but what counts as art is not always clear.
Since individual cases are determined dialogically, and disputes are expected, it should
not worry us if this class can be defined only vaguely. This is a reasonable determining
ground for a socially constructed identity, and discussions about artistic excellence can
commence. We should not be surprised, however, that the problem of choosing a
rubric for excellence persists. It is a problem that will not be fully resolved here, as
excellence may come in as many forms as there are differences of opinion about the
purpose or meaning of art. But this does not mean moral theorizing—or morality
itself—has run aground.
Artistic excellence, seen from a moral perspective, is about an artist’s whole
life—meaning not that everything is equally important, but that how and in what way
one’s life coheres as an artist is in view. Here, the primacy of art practice is apparent,
and philosophy can be seen as providing a framework for comparing more or less
excellent artists. Unfortunately for philosophy, the notion of “practice” arrives on the
scene with no ready-made boundary between an artist’s work and other aspects of her
life. The quality and reception of one’s artworks are only one part of an artist’s
practice—depending on his or her goals, an artist may achieve different kinds of
success. Artists may choose to 1) create more or less art, 2) make their art more or less
public, 3) work with other artists, and so on. Artists may also strive to become better.
This is the special case of “improvement” that intersects with the matter of education—
indeed it is the matter of art education. Yet, perhaps my experience of art education (see
Chapter II) is indicative of the theoretical difficulty surrounding the matter of what
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counts as improvement. Art practices are multifaceted, and this leads to irreducible
complexity for the matter of education. Answers in the form of, “X counts as
improvement” are always unsatisfying in two ways. Because a dialogue about X needs to
occur within a practice in order for it to be true of the practice (this is implied by the
discussion above about what “counts” as art), a claim will always be contingent upon
the perspective of artists who deem X to be important in the first place. And even if
there is such a dialogue, it cannot be considered to be settled once and for all, so the
significance of choosing X is diminished.
This problem—that the meaning of excellence is socially determined—is a
problem for moral philosophy, and this comes as no surprise. Moral philosophies
attempt to render human action according to a conception of goodness—whether that
good is Aristotle’s telos or Mill’s utilitarianism, an argument is put forth (or an
assumption is made) that there is an underlying structure or order according to which
human action is intelligible as more or less excellent. MacIntyre’s philosophy unfolds
along these lines. His conception of moral life as three “registers” of experience—
practices, narrative quests, and moral traditions—is one solution to the problem of
excellence in art as socially determined. It is almost enough. The story of virtue
emerging “on the ground” in practices makes room for diverse kinds of excellence that
constitute morality, and is even unshaken by charges of relativism (“Why these
practices? Why this good?). Even MacIntyre is ultimately confounded by the problem.
Perhaps ironically (since he sets his own philosophy apart from others’ on this point),
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the ascendance of virtue toward final “historical” ends loom in the background of his
philosophy. He says, for example:
Why begin from practices? Other moral philosophers after all have begun from
a consideration of passions or desires or from the elucidation of some
conception of duty or goodness. In either case the discussion is all too apt to be
governed from then on by some version of the means-end distinction according
to which all human activities are either conducted as means to already given or
decided ends or are simply worthwhile in themselves or perhaps both. What
this framework omits from view are those ongoing modes of human activity
within which ends have to be discovered and rediscovered, and means devised to
pursue them. (MacIntyre, 1984, p. 273)
That even MacIntyre’s philosophy refers incessantly to “ends” should give us
pause. Is there such a thing as moral philosophy without an end or ends? Our answer
depends upon our needs. Conceptions of genius that overdetermine artistic excellence
are analogous to conceptions of moral philosophy that overdetermine human action.
Underdetermination may be preferable, but neither will it suffice when
overdetermination is “in the air”—e.g., when art students peruse the art library. The
knee-jerk reaction may be to leap to counter overdetermination with still more
overdetermination, and with all his talk about rationality and rival traditions,
MacIntyre’s philosophy must be seen as taking this route. The opposite may be
unthinkable: quietism. This also fails to be a true response, for in philosophy a
response should (and needs to) take the form of an argument. A measured version of
underdetermination of excellence can be such a response, as it may convey an
argument while steering clear of known fallacies and mere conjecture. In other words,
we need to philosophize even more, and aim at understanding education in art practice.
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Moral philosophers, whether they like it or not, may not be equipped to understand the
different meanings of human action and its so-called ends.
1.1 Philosophy of Education
The best alternative to moral philosophy—or perhaps the likeliest heir of the
inheritance of moral philosophy—is philosophy of education (or “educational theory”). I
will not discuss its breadth or history here, but in short, the concerns once addressed
by the abstract notions of ought are, in educational theory, superceded by studies of
cognition, relationships, identity, and so on. Instead of being reduced to emotivism—
the doctrine that moral judgments are expressions of preference—philosophers of
education seek to explain some of the underlying structures that make expressions of
preference (among other capacities) possible.55 Insofar as other philosophers and
scientists also explain these structures, they too could be understood as philosophers
of education, especially when they address “growth” in the sense Dewey articulates (see
Chapter II). Thus, MacIntyre’s theory of virtue can be partly read in this way.
Subordination, theorized by MacIntyre (1984) as an essential experience for
entering into a practice, causes judgments about excellence to arise in a systematic way
55
Emotivism is not interested in the intersection of an individual’s preferences and the surrounding
social world. It is too atomistic in its conceptualization of morality, and too sympathetic to the
charge of relativism that follows on the heels of the claim that the meaning of excellence is
socially determined. For more on emotivism, see Stevenson (1945/1960). For more on why it fails,
see MacIntyre (1984), especially Chapter 2.
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(p. 188). Expanding his account of subordination, therefore, is one way to read
MacIntyre as a philosopher of education. Because of my interest in art, I will depart
from MacIntyre by eschewing the vocabulary of “virtue.” In addition to a theory of a
“unity of the virtues” (a concept I will return to in Chapter VII), moral philosophers
such as MacIntyre want to strengthen the perception that lives characterized by deep
involvement in social practices are recognizably excellent. Virtue theory positions
“virtue” as partially synonymous with “excellence,” but renders it systematically
according to a broader framework of “goodness.”56 This larger story of ethics, however
accurate it may or may not be, is supported by observations of social interactions. Like
any adept interlocutor in ethics, or philosophy in general, MacIntyre’s views are viable
even as critiques are leveled at his work. For this reason alone, the history of the
concept notwithstanding, the idea of virtue still resonates.
It is just this matter of unity, however, that Chapter IV recommends against.
For while unity may be a reasonable aim from a personal perspective, it is an unwieldy
theoretical notion, especially from a psychological perspective. Though the comparison
between saints and geniuses commenced in Chapter I hinted at the importance of traits
as summarizing apparatuses, and Part I outlines an examination of genius within a
moral framework, traitology can be seen as a necessary side-constraint on moral theory.
56
The notion of a systematic framework arises in the form of a telos—an ultimate end or goal of
existence. The sense of an “ultimate” end points to an ordering of goods, but it is not obvious how
this may work out in a real context. Though the goal of “happiness” is often held up as an example
of an ultimate end, application of this theory has proven difficult. In contrast to this top-down
model, some virtue ethicists try to define our telos from the bottom-up. See, for example, Taylor
(1989) for his theory of “hypergoods” as goods that trump other goods.
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Attribution theory, discussed in Chapter IV, supports the hypothesis that genius is a
trait or set of traits, but not a unity of virtues. The mistake will be to collapse the
distinction between a “set” of traits and a “unity” of virtues, but such a unity is just the
kind of higher-order trait that attribution theory recommends against (by calling for a
situation-sensitive lens on persons and personality).57 The mistake of imputing
behavior to traits because details about a person are lacking should increase standards
for behavioral evidence. Just as we dispense with summarizing trait apparatuses in first
person reflection, so we should dispense with them from the third person when
possible. Sets should give way to single traits as evidence is refined.
Since the present inquiry into genius seeks a practice-specific and theoretically
narrower understanding of genius, it should not be surprising that we suspend the
possibility of genius as a set of traits. Genius may elsewhere be defined as a set of traits,
but this is effectively what my inquiry sets out to avoid within the given theoretical and
autobiographical framework. Therefore, if a future theory of genius requires one or
more additional traits be added to my specification, then it can be understood as
competing with a hermeneutic theory of genius in two ways. 1) It would mean that
genius is not a single trait, and 2) it muddies the identification of the greatest single
predictor of artistic excellence. My philosophical interest in education is therefore an
additional side-constraint on my analysis of genius, as it means I am seeking a behavior
57
Ethicists will recognize the similarity between “situational understanding” and the Aristotelian
notion of “practical wisdom.” It is an Aristotelian emphasis on wisdom, however, that traitology
warns against.
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that explains the emergence of artistic excellence. I am positing a normative ethics in an
inquiry restricted by my interest in art education—especially its formative and social
aspects as described by Dewey. I am not rejecting other normative ethics so much as
privileging the perspective of art education (e.g., understanding Gauguin’s
development as an artist is more interesting than understanding his development as a
husband or father).
Traitology helps to frame genius alongside education and development, but
psychology, social psychology, cognitive psychology, and other experiment-based
research do not offer a comprehensive framework from which to displace educational
philosophy and other philosophical discourses. (I am not primarily interested, for
example, in genius as a pattern of firing neurons or a hegemony of practitioners. I am
interested in genius as a way of life.) Thus, we have to philosophize for art education in
a new vernacular—one that both deploys and challenges existing moral philosophy.
The remaining chapters arrive at a view of artistic genius as excellence in art practice.
To describe the moral landscape of art education, and differently than it is elsewhere
and otherwise represented by ethics (and aesthetics), I argue that moral excellence in
art practice is contingent upon subordination.
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2. The Value of Educational Goods
2.1 MacIntyre’s View of Subordination
If the first person account of genius is evinced by the claim “I am a genius,” and
the third person account is captured by the claim “he is a genius,” then the claim “you
are a genius” represents a different perspective—that of the “second person.” This
perspective shows up in situations where one artist trusts the judgment of another
artist. Such convictions have been historically understood as a constitutive aspect of
education, apprenticeship, subordination, and so on. Here, I use the term
“subordination” to invoke MacIntyre’s concept of a practice. The assertion that such
behavior also implies domination, oppression, servitude, slavery, and the like should be
suspended on the grounds that, in some sense, nothing worthy of the name of trust is
ever really granted. 58
Subordination emerges from MacIntyre’s (1984) story of virtue (p. 188). Virtue
is not only valued in practices, he argues, but it is at least partially cultivated in
practices as well. For MacIntyre, practices are essentially good, and as I briefly discussed
in Chapter II, this valuation must be understood as a weaker kind of good than can be
58
With the term subordination, I read MacIntyre as being concerned with trust in interpersonal
relationships, and not power per se. The dialectic of power potentially adds an interesting layer of
interpretation, but not one I will pursue here.
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sought elsewhere (Porter, 2003, p. 41), as he imagines a “logical development of virtue”
that builds on the experience of excellence in practices. He points to subordination and
“exposure” as two features of behavior that coincide with the “achievement” of the
intrinsic good of practices (MacIntyre, 1984, p. 188). I take him to mean that exposure
and subordination help to explain the development of excellence in practices. For
example, he links subordination to practices in the following way:
[The practice’s] goods can only be achieved by subordinating ourselves within
the practice in our relationship to other practitioners. We have to learn to
recognize what is due to whom; we have to be prepared to take whatever selfendangering risks are demanded along the way; and we have to listen carefully
to what we are told about our own inadequacies and to reply with the same
carefulness for the facts. (p. 191)
This is an instrumental depiction of subordination toward the end of achieving
“goods.” To better understand the process of striving for virtue entailed by this, we
have to consider MacIntyre’s step-by-step account of virtue that begins with the
achievement of goods in practices. I will turn to this account in the following section. I
will also show that MacIntyre does not fully articulate the process by which a person
becomes a more excellent practitioner. Exposure and subordination remain only
tantalizing clues that may serve as a MacIntyrian philosophy of education. Thus,
though only clarifying MacIntyre’s account of the “early” manifestation of virtue, a
closer look at exposure and subordination may help us reconsider genius as a matter of
moral excellence.
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2.2 The Development of Excellence
In MacIntyre’s estimation, the discussion of the development of excellence
begins with the notion of exposure. Increasing one’s exposure to a practice, he argues,
is the most basic strategy for becoming a practitioner. The basic formula here is
something like this: the more one is exposed to a practice, the more likely one will be
able to recognize the excellence of products as measured against historical standards
(e.g., becoming a fan of baseball may lead to deeper involvement in the game). Exposure
establishes necessary foundational experiences for achieving excellence, but common
sense tells us it is an insufficient condition for becoming an excellent practitioner.
Practitioners must be more than observers.
MacIntyre’s intuition that “every practice requires a certain kind of relationship
between those who participate in it” (MacIntyre, 1984, p. 191), leads to his claim that
subordination is a necessary step in the process of entering into a practice. Explaining
the role of subordination, MacIntyre says,
A practice involves standards of excellence and obedience to rules as well as the
achievement of goods. To enter into a practice is to accept the authority of those
standards and the inadequacy of my own performance as judged by them. It is to
subject my own attitudes, choices, preferences, and tastes to the standards
which currently and partially define the practice. (p. 190)
Essential to this definition is the fact that one cannot become expert in a practice if one
does not engage it as a shared, social project. This nominally means a practitioner must
have qualities essential to any cooperative activity (Porter, 2003, p. 41), and MacIntyre
suggests that the virtues of justice, courage, and honesty are necessary components of
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practices (MacIntyre, 1984, p. 191). The discussion of goods that follows somewhat
obscures the matters of exposure and subordination.
MacIntyre claims a practice’s internal goods “can only be achieved by
subordinating ourselves within the practice in our relationship to other practitioners”
(MacIntyre, 1984, p. 191). I understand him to equate “the achievement” of these goods
with their attainment or appreciation of these same goods. But this has already been
shown to be a somewhat unsatisfactory description. It seems, for example, that there
are multiple kinds of internal goods, some of which may be easier and harder to
appreciate, attain, or achieve.
Confusion arises when one takes seriously MacIntyre’s claim that someone who
lacks necessary virtuous qualities cannot experience the “internal goods” of a practice
(MacIntyre, 1984, p. 191). What are these virtuous qualities? How does one “acquire”
them when these goods are necessary to the allotment of value (of a practice) in the
first place? MacIntyre appears to beg the question of how excellence in practices is only
partially constituent of virtue. For Aristotle, whose philosophical insights guide
MacIntyre in this area, reflection on virtues is held together by a core conception of
virtue (Porter, 2003, p. 40). It is unclear to what extent Aristotle’s “virtue” is
synonymous with a modern conception of excellence, and MacIntyre makes the matter
somewhat more difficult when he rejects some of Aristotle’s metaphysics with his
adoption of Thomism. Nevertheless, he pursues this “first step” of the definition of
virtue by developing a notion of excellence in practices.
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To make sense of excellence, MacIntyre quickly moves from a discussion of
what defines a practice to a discussion of “goods” that are internal to practices—what he
calls “internal goods.” 59 This minimal treatment of human development is not
surprising given the breadth of the After Virtue project. Indeed, he seems to go down
this path to make better sense of individuals’ varying understanding of practices.
Positing a plurality of goods pays respect to local experience and individuals’
differences, but also diverse practices. The specificity of these goods is highly
dependent on their articulation, and they can only be specified in terms of a particular
practice. For example, MacIntyre says of chess playing that internal goods may be “the
achievement of a certain highly particular kind of skill, strategic imagination, and
competitive intensity” (MacIntyre, 1984, p. 188). But in what sense is there a plurality
of goods? How did we ever get from the good to the goods?
The example is given of a young chess player who is lured into the practice with
external goods—rewards that are independent of the game, as “their achievement is
never to be had only by engaging in some particular kind of practice” (MacIntyre, 1984,
p. 188)[emphasis in the original]. The difference between internal and external goods
has been contested somewhat in literature surrounding MacIntyre’s theory of practices
(notably in literature pertaining to education), and the outcome is that we cannot rule
out some overlap. I will return to this matter below. Presently, it is enough to
59
MacIntyre has elaborated somewhat on the definition of a practice, but remains content with a
definition that is vague and suits his particular ideological whims. For more on this matter, see the
special issue of The Journal of Philosophy and Education, 37(2) on MacIntyre’s contributions to
educational theory.
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recognize that a conception of goods qua good is the most expansive description of
how excellence is recognizable in practices.
Partly due to their instrumental value in practices, goods stand out as special
aspects of experience. But it is not always clear what may be counted as a good. Goods
are thought to provide a practitioner with a conception of the good that is intrinsic and
not merely instrumental to the experience of virtue (Porter, 2003, p. 41), but their
instrumental value cannot be overlooked if we are to appreciate the social nature of
practices. How fine-grained can we be about the difference between instrumental goods
and intrinsic goods? This discussion of goods quickly becomes confusing.
2.3 Two Kinds of Goods
On MacIntyre’s account, there are two kinds (varieties) of internal goods,
neither of which is described as particularly instrumental to the achievement of
excellence. The first kind of good is the “excellence of the products,” including (for
example) practitioners’ performances, and this excellence “has to be understood
historically” (MacIntyre, 1984, p. 189). The discussion of the achievement of the
second internal good—“the pursuit of excellence” (p. 190)—as the good of a certain
way of life is more problematic. To be sure, living a greater or lesser part of life as a
painter (for example) seems to be a good according to a narrative quest, and this
involves the development of virtue outside of practices alone. This kind of good,
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therefore, seems to be a shortcut that anticipates the difficulty of characterizing
individuals’ diverse experiences of practices.
The second kind of good presents additional difficulties. Even more than the
obvious problems of trying to measure or account for how particular variables
influence excellence (which is already disputed in a broad body of educational research),
it is not clear what “excellence” should be taken to mean. Even for scholars who are
thoroughly immersed in the Aristotelian tradition that MacIntyre represents, the work
of judging an individual case of excellence presents challenges to the whole enterprise
of valuing excellence.60 The depth and quality of one’s involvement in a practice seems
to be the result of a confluence of circumstances and opinions. Thus, MacIntyre’s
theory, as a theory of education, seems to trade on the assumption that a person’s
experience of excellence (the first person experience) will “fit” well with a common
understanding of excellence (a view held by a community). Lacking a more elegant
name for this assumption, I will call it an internal-external correlation.
For example, if I am a good fisherman by most standards—I can tie my line up
nicely, navigate marine topography well, and cast smoothly—yet I catch no fish, it can
60
Aristotle (2000), with his view of phronesis, claims that a cases warrant examination in light of
particular contexts, but what exactly is constitutive of a context is an open question. For example,
we may want to acknowledge a student’s drawing as excellent, but until we know him or her well,
we will have a hard time discerning whether or not any single work is really worthy of merit. It is
then a slippery slope to the point where we want to know each student’s entire life story, which
may indeed be important for arriving at sound judgments. Similarly, we can understand the
problem of context with respect to multiple and overlapping spheres of life. A technically bad
drawing may be a great psychological achievement.
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rightfully be called a matter of luck.61 When I do catch fish, their strength and size will
be a “just” measure of my ability, and other fishermen will rightfully see the truth in
both cases. This internal-external correlation can be said to work well in cases where
the excellence of a practice is judged by simple standards, or notions of excellence are
tied to easily identifiable external goods.
But standards are not always so obvious or similarly agreed-upon. In the case of
an art practice, about which tastes can change, judgments about the value of internal
goods can be made more “subjectively,” and where the would-be external goods have
historically been subject to sharply limited production, the internal-external correlation
can break down. A result of this complexity may be that the matter of “bad” luck can be
exacerbated. This may not be an important problem in cases where the individual is
indifferent to outsider’s perceptions. But in cases where an evaluative community is
desirable, and it is fragmented or simply does not pass judgment, MacIntyre’s theory is
not yet sophisticated enough to explain how a good practitioner becomes better. Thus,
arriving at some clarity about educational goods leads back to MacIntyre’s convincing
but elusive practice-community equation. This “ethics” needed to be better articulated,
for no other reason than in the defense of artists whose livelihoods depend on fair or
consistent judgments.
This is not a trivial matter, and not only a matter that only pertains to
practicing artists. For example, how artists are perceived is a perennial footnote in the
61
Fishing is one of MacIntyre’s favorite examples. I deploy it in his honor, but also to maintain a
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national debate over mandated curriculums and public school funding. Art is treated as
a non-essential, extracurricular, and, tragically, often unnecessary part of schooling. As
students of this system grow older, a “trickle-up” effect changes the way colleges and
universities support the arts (and there is certainly a top-down effect in place too). “Too
much talk” about art may indeed be a bad thing for the artworld, but for the purpose of
social change, artists need to secure autonomy as a community and deliver a confident
opinion on the experiential, developmental, and intellectual importance of art making.
On whether or not society is so constituted so as to make spending resources on art
education in public schools defensible against arguments from the “bottom line,” one
can only remain hopeful.
3. Education Without Virtue
3.1 Teachers and Students
If excellence is contingent upon both the quality of one’s exposure to a practice
and the quality of one’s subordination to other practitioners, then these are essentially
an additional kind of good. They are not either of the two kinds of goods MacIntyre
modicum of continuity with his perspective.
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proposes exist in practices, and it is difficult to see how they would count as goods
according to the intuition that a good is phenomenologically good—that the experience
of the good feels like “human flourishing.” That is, goods need to be ends in
themselves, and neither exposure nor subordination meets this qualification in
practices such as arts, sports, or sciences. There is, however, another possibility.
Education itself could be understood as a practice with its own conception of ends and
moral phenomenology.
MacIntyre has been resistant to such a claim even though many of his critics
decry his conviction.62 The most common objection to his denial that education is a
practice is based on the fact that there are institutions whose primary purpose is
education. The notion that education is about specialized habits of mind is not new,
and educational research about “critical thinking” points to habits that are dissociated
from specific practices. There are also the facts that teaching is a specialized profession
and the title of “student” is bestowed without regard to a specific practice. But perhaps
these are shallow objections.
MacIntyre has something more in mind—that his denial of the practice of
education is staunchly theoretical, or even ideological. As a theoretical claim, it could be
motivated by the intuition that, as a practice, education is missing something
important. It could also be motivated by the thought that education is essential, in
62
See, for example, the special issue of The Journal of Philosophy of Education (Vol. 37, No. 2, 2003) on
MacIntyre and education. See also, Ibid. ( Vol. 35, No. 1, 2002) for Joseph Dunne’s interview with
MacIntyre (pp. v-19).
147
some form or other, to all practices. This would bestow on education the status of
being something like a meta-practice, and MacIntyre seems unwilling (at the moment)
to entertain such possibilities. There is also the possibility that MacIntyre does not
wish to grant education status as a practice because he believes it is a mistake to do so.
This would put it in a group with other practices, such as evil ones, that MacIntyre
does not discuss. This would be a much harder argument to make, as it most certainly
relies on judgments that are external to practices in themselves—it requires an already
broader vision of good.
Confusion arises in the debate about whether or not teaching is a practice when
the practical routines of schooling are not carefully considered apart from the broader
“moral association in which all human agents are engaged by virtue of social
membership” (Carr, 2003, p. 266). We need a better distinction between two senses of
teaching. Carr agrees with MacIntyre that teaching is not a practice according to this
view of teaching and education as fundamentally moral activities. In this way, he very
clearly argues that what makes someone a good teacher is not the “specialized
professional training” that serve the specific social, economic, and bureaucratic ends of
schooling, but the very same qualities that make the teacher a good person.
I am partly sympathetic to MacIntyre’s view that anything so fundamental to
social life cannot be a constituent to the definition of a practice, but I am not convinced
the counter-argument could not be more deeply respectful of the complexities of
schooling. The move to parse the differences between the work of schooling and
educative behavior does not hold up against the simple fact of the widespread
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recognition of teaching in schools as a practice. Here, we follow MacIntyre who, despite
his controversial remarks to the contrary, simply does not lay the groundwork
anywhere to disregard commonplace social agreement on such an issue. Carr, or
MacIntyre himself, may disagree with the effectiveness of schooling, so instituted, but
in my mind that cannot be grounds for disproving the claim that teaching is a practice.
Playing baseball may not make me a better fisherman, but it may be worthwhile
for its own sake. Carr agrees, as he is particularly interested in the value of teaching for
“the promotion of a love of knowledge, truth and virtue for its own sake” [his
emphasis] (Carr, 2003, p. 264). Perhaps he has just drawn the net too close, for while
teaching may include these goods, it may include others as well. What makes Carr’s
argument appear tight is his insistence upon a conveniently simplistic notion of the
“moral self-transformation” he proposes as a definition of education (Carr, 2003, p.
265). Here again I have to defer to MacIntyre’s insight into the role of practices in
moral life to contradict his own claim that teaching is not a practice. It is true that
teaching is, in some sense, necessary to all practices, but this kind of teaching is not to
be confused with a systematic institutional project of exposing children to a set of
practices. MacIntyre acknowledges the importance of exposure in the event of
becoming a practitioner, and this suffices as a deepening of Carr’s abstract notions of
knowledge, truth and virtue so as to be a virtue-ethicist’s rebuttal. Maybe this is where
Carr splits his differences with MacIntyre and maintains his hope that there may be
universally recognizable knowledge, truth, and virtue. From such a perspective
schooling could indeed be seen as a peculiar task where the managerial skills of
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classroom teaching can be seen as wholly separate from the quality of a teacher’s
character that really motivates education.
This view contrasts with MacIntyre’s emphasis on practices as the origin of
morality. It is a teacher’s ability to perform in the whole capacity of a purveyor of a
practice (even an activity that is rumored to be part of a practice) that can be said to be
the essential characteristic of the practice of teaching, regardless of other applications
of these criteria. Carr’s poorly articulated challenge to teachers—that just because a
task is not theoretical or technical does not necessarily make it easy—misses the point.
Teaching is technical and theoretical when construed in this quite different way than
only “moral relations in which positive self-transformation is presupposed to
improvement of others” (Carr, 2003, p. 266).
We should acknowledge that exposure and subordination do not qualify as
goods within a practice to which they grant a practitioner access. But they do make the
achievement of other goods possible, so they share some definitional ground with
virtue that is thought to coincide with the intrinsic good of practices. It invites
additional confusion, however, to call this “virtue” (as MacIntyre does). It is something
more like what Dewey called a “habit of mind”—a disposition that readies one for
experience. Sadly, this begs the question of what counts as virtue. In a sense, a more
robust definition is suspended until the matters of the narrative order of a single
human life and moral traditions have been explored. This may or may not lead to a
different understanding of virtue.
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3.2 The Practice of Education
One solution is to grant education the status of a practice regardless of the
paradox that follows. For it would appear that one must be a practitioner in education—
a student—before one has access to other practices. Indeed, problems arise. For
example, this conflicts with the fact that sometimes poor students are excellent
practitioners, and vice versa. But I propose understanding one’s excellence as a student
as leading to a different (and specific) kind of success in other practices—the ability to
enter into practices with ease (but not necessarily access that directly and automatically
leads to excellence). It amounts to having certain habits of mind.63 It is not only the
ability to enter into a practice, but the process of sustaining a relationship to a practice
that teaching makes possible. Analogous to MacIntyre’s concept of internal goods in
practices, I will therefore call exposure and subordination “educational goods.” It is not
yet clear, however, to what degree these goods lead to the possibility of excellence in
other practices.
One possible outcome is that while they lead to the achievement of other goods,
they do not contribute to the achievement of excellence. On this outcome, MacIntyre’s
worry about teaching being understood as a practice seems right. For what good, we
might ask, does it do us to be excellent at the practice of education without ever
63
The observation that certain habits of mind coincide with flourishing was made by Aristotle, who
conceived of “intellectual virtues” such as practical wisdom and judgment (Aristotle, 2000, pp. 103115).
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achieving excellence in any other practice? On the other hand, recognizing education as
a practice has several consequences. 1) The moral philosopher can give a better
explanation of how internal goods are recognized. 2) Some virtues, like patience, will
seem more like internal goods. 3) The notion of a unity of virtues (especially
intellectual ones) is not needed to explain the achievement of internal goods. 4) The
matter of a narrative order of a single human life (a narrative quest) can be understood
in relation to the practice of education. 5) “Morality” can be understood along the lines
of access to practices. And 6), “Tradition” can be understood apart from morality. Each
of these outcomes will now be considered in more detail.
(1) MacIntyre’s argument that excellence leads to the perception of internal
goods, and vice versa, begs the question of what is meant by “excellence.” A more
elegant explanation of excellence in practices may be given by considering the
prolonged experience of internal goods as well as educational goods. The fact that
internal goods are as individualistic as practitioner’s experiences should not deter moral
philosophers from recognizing that hierarchies of excellence in practices are similar
across practices. While this observation that may lead to the notion that virtues exists
above (or between) practices, a simpler claim is that these so-called virtues are internal
goods of education. MacIntyre (1984) tentatively agrees:
A virtue is an acquired human quality the possession and exercise of which
tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are internal to practices and the
lack of which effectively prevents us from achieving any such goods. (p. 191)
MacIntyre says this is only a tentative and partial definition of virtue, which leaves open
the matter of how else virtue may be understood. This is a sign of an overburdened
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concept. Does the lack of patience, for example, really mean a practitioner cannot
achieve “any such goods”? A theory of education will be better off accounting for
essential human qualities that allow for achievement.
(2) That qualities often described as virtues are better understood alongside
educational goods does not contradict the sense that they may otherwise be practicespecific. Courage in wartime is not the same as courage in public speaking, but there is
a sense that both require a similar commitment to a practice. Once we acknowledge
that these commitments follow from exposure and subordination, the notion that
courage is part of a moral phenomenology of war is sensible enough. If what we mean
when we refer to virtues are habits of mind, there may be no need to contrive a logical
development of virtue apart from prolonged educational experience. That is, it should
not be surprising that the combination of increased exposure and subordination over
time leads to experience that other practitioners privilege when they seek out guidance
and fellowship.
(3) It follows from Flanagan’s (1991) critique of a “unity of virtues” from a
psychological perspective that instead of making a positive (essentialist) argument
about the achievement of excellence, we should prefer a minimal psychological account.
The notion of exposure and subordination as educational goods is this kind of minimal
account of the achievement of internal goods. According to this account, one simply
does or does not have sufficient experience to become an excellent practitioner. Part of
this experience is becoming a practitioner to which other practitioners choose to
become subordinated. I will say more about this important point in the following
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chapter, but for now it is enough to recognize that this will be where excellence gathers
meaning. In other words, in this practice-based definition of excellence, the notion of
unity gives way to the notion of community.
(4) It is unclear why MacIntyre conceptualizes narrative quests as “logically
following” the development of virtue in practices. Perhaps he is addressing the
“ordering of goods” in a similar way as Taylor (1989) accomplishes with his concept of
“hypergoods.” This defies psychological minimalism. As Flanagan (1991) shows, there
is too much diversity in moral life to make hypotheses about overarching patterns of
identity. But this does not preclude us from making hypotheses about underlying
structures of identity formation. When MacIntyre argues for the importance of the
narrative order of single human lives, he does so to suggest that virtue cannot be
defined apart from the distinctiveness of human identities. To take this seriously
means having to be skeptical about the notion of moral tradition, for it is too difficult
to generalize across practices (not to mention the difficulty of generalizing across
identities). A preferable alternative is to say that moralities develop alongside the
experience of educational goods which are by and of involvement in practices with
traditions. This is akin to Flanagan’s claim that there are moral personalities.
(5) While the concept of morality may be superfluous within practices, it is still
helpful as a term for the difficulties surrounding entering into practices. It captures
the experience of education. Choosing between practices becomes a substantive
dimension of morality, and determining “right” or “wrong” action (that favored
discourse of analytic philosophy) can be understood as a complex matter pertaining to
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individuals and communities with ongoing commitments in multiple practices. To say
that someone is morally excellent is to make a claim that he or she is well positioned
and/or capable of achieving excellence in a practice. It is the same as claiming he or she
is an excellent student or teacher. Precisely because of the overlapping nature of
education (with other practices), it is often helpful to say both things.
(6) MacIntyre includes the case of forward-thinking practitioners into the
definition of a practice. He alludes to the “result that human powers to achieve
excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically
extended” (p. 187)[my emphasis]. Without the sense that human powers and
conceptions are systematically extended, it would not be difficult to imagine that
MacIntyre is referring to individuals’ growth. But the reference to a system brings
about the image of practitioners carrying practices forward together—this is also
implied by his notion of a moral tradition. MacIntyre is often thought to be a
Communitarian because of this emphasis on community as a foundation of moral
principles, though he distances himself from this movement on the grounds that
nation states should not be understood as communities (Murphy, 2003, p. 159). His
emphasis is on practices. The nature of the systematic extension he has in mind is clear
in the following claim:
To enter into a practice is to enter into a relationship not only with its
contemporary practitioners, but also with those who have preceded us in the
practice to its present point. It is thus the achievement, and a fortiori the
authority, of a tradition which I then confront and from which I have to learn.
(p. 194)
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The problem with this idea of forwardness, besides its speculative nature, is its
sheer complexity. Who is capable of judging what counts as the forward direction?
MacIntyre does not mean that forward-thinking practitioners merely extend tradition
in time, but intentionally transform it according to their particular beliefs, values,
desires, and so on. The notion of a distinctive moral tradition, therefore, is ambiguous
given the diverse possibilities for morality. Disambiguating our understanding of
morality will mean giving up the moral claim embedded in forwardness. We should
claim, contrary to MacIntyre, that practices are systematically extended in the wake of
the achievement of subordination—the development of “human powers to achieve
excellence” and “human conceptions of the ends and goods involved” are the causes and
the effects of this activity.
Together, these six outcomes amount to a major reconceptualization of what is
meant by “moral nature.” To refer to moral nature is to adopt a philosophical
perspective that allows us to compare the capacity of practitioners to experience
internal goods, and therefore be rightfully judged as more or less excellent
practitioners within a community. It may refer ultimately to a universal principle (or
set of principles) that can be said to govern human behavior, but the complexity of
such a claim would be immense. The term “virtue” is deemed problematic because it
refers to just this kind of overarching good. In its place, we find a dialectic of education
that generates its meaning in a practice where students and teachers strive to
systematically extend the tradition of other practices. I have argued that there is
nothing paradoxical about this—the world is replete with overlapping practices in
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which practitioners stake their identities on vague and varied grounds. With an eye to
this greater landscape of practices, MacIntyre makes the following observation:
Commitment to sustaining the kind of community in which the virtues can
flourish may be incompatible with the devotion which a particular practice—of
the arts, for example—requires. So there may be tensions between the claims of
family life and those of the arts—the problem that Gauguin solved or failed to
solve by fleeing to Polynesia. (MacIntyre, 1984, p. 200)
This strange notion of virtues flourishing (and not humans flourishing) is
symptomatic of MacIntyre’s commitment to a vantage of social criticism. Like anyone,
he has a particular notion of the good—indeed, the good society. Strange though it may
seem, this may fall outside the scope of ethics. The tension he describes is simply a fact
of life. Since none of us can truly stand outside of tradition, we may have to settle for
entering into debates about the good with only our diverse commitments at which we
have arrived through our experience of practices.
4. Conclusion
What makes some practitioners stand out as morally excellent is a specific kind
of relationship they negotiate with other practitioners—the achievement of
subordination. Understanding subordination as central to education, and therefore
central to moral life, is a major step toward adopting a provisional account of artistic
genius as moral excellence. This chapter defines parameters by which achievement in a
practice can be understood as moral excellence. Tradition is theorized as a set of
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ongoing relations between practitioners, and subordination is shown to be the strategy
by which practitioners maintain, uphold, and carry forward a shared understanding of
excellence. There is, however, much left unsaid about the nature of subordination, and
Chapter VI aims to better define subordination as an educational good. I turn to
Gadamer to elaborate the artist as understander, and argue that a certain mode of
subordination is an essential feature of artistic genius.
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VI–HERMENEUTIC EXCELLENCE
1. Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics
Attribution theory left us with a picture of the human inclination to make
assertions about “personality,” understood as a bundle of habits, or traits. Summarizing
behavior from a third person perspective was seen to have practical outcomes. For the
present inquiry, it is notable that genius may indeed be a persistent (or “deep”) aspect of
personality, but its social value is dependent upon its outward appearance. In
determining what genius can be said to best refer, at least with regard to (and in the
terms of) practices, I turned to MacIntyre’s view of excellence in practices.
A framework was adopted for understanding excellence as a student as a key
component of the achievement of excellence in practices. This kind of excellence is seen
as a good contender for defining moral excellence, but it is also made up of constituent
parts that require further definition. Exposure and subordination have been identified
as important achievements (MacIntyre’s “goods”) internal to the practice of education.
To better understand excellence in education, these two goods may be further
elaborated, and other internal goods may need to be identified (reflection, “critical
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thinking,” and other names for rigorous intellectual activity come to mind). By this I
mean that, if we take exposure as the more basic of the two goods, then MacIntyre’s
picture of subordination is lacking in some respects. Like other practices, there will be
standards for excellence in education, and it is helpful to understand the causal
relationship between a good and excellence. Although I have already argued that
subordination partly describes what we ordinarily mean when we describe the
excellence of students, this needs further elaboration. The concept of subordination
draws our attention to moments of practice where one practitioner enters into a
trusting relationship with another practitioner, but I want to draw out the most
important features of this relationship to consider its meaning and implications for the
concept of genius.
Gadamer’s theory of understanding will be shown to further define
subordination as an educational good, and vice versa. Truth and Method (Gadamer,
1960/2002), is a seminal work of hermeneutics in which Gadamer develops the
philosophical study of interpretation and understanding—philosophical
hermeneutics—as a universal theory that builds on other early twentieth-century
insights in philosophy and science (such as psychology). This chapter seeks to use
philosophical hermeneutics as an interpretive lens to describe an activity that most
reliably leads to innovative (and, therefore, excellent) artistic products. Philosophical
hermeneutics frames this activity as a process of understanding, interpreting, and
experiencing traditionary events.
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1.1 Artworks as Examples
A recent art exhibition, War Images (Hughes, 2005), helps put forward the
significance of Gadamer’s view of understanding by exploring the experience of
traditionary events. Hung as a solo exhibition at the Macy Art Gallery at Teachers
College, this show (my own) was partly intended an exploration of philosophical
hermeneutics. I attempted to better understand how Picasso constructed the portrayal
of emotion in his series of Weeping Women created during (and ostensibly about) the
1937 Spanish Civil War (see Figures 5-7 for a only a few examples from his larger body
of work). I responded to his images, as well as my experience of viewing them, by
creating a series of digital artworks that were printed on paper. I created a total of
twelve pieces, several of which were multi-panel works.
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Figure 5. Pablo Picasso, Weeping Woman, 1937.
Figure 6. Pablo Picasso, Weeping Woman, 1937.
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In War Images, seven framed works were digital “sketches” that represented
Picasso’s original portraits with better accuracy than the other works in the show
(Figure 8). I cropped these images in close approximation to the originals, and I
manipulated them only slightly.64 The remaining larger works (paper sheets hung from
clips in five arrangements) were the “experimental” part of the show that represented
the movement of my thoughts and interests in Picasso’s art, war, and so on. But to say
these artworks represented my thoughts and interests is only partly true, and
Gadamer’s philosophy helped me reconsider the complex process that took shape as I
created and displayed these artworks.
64
Sometimes small “movements” in Photoshop render a formerly iconic image unrecognizable. I will
discuss the use of Photoshop further below in this section.
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Figure 7. Pablo Picasso, Weeping Woman, 1937.
Figure 8. Brian Hughes, Untitled (5 of 7), 2005.
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Though working with digital files in Photoshop is relatively easy, the creation of
images is complex. I set out to make the body of work that constituted the exhibition by
downloading thumbnail-sized images of many of Picasso’s Weeping Women from
Google Image Search. I played with the thumbnail images—dissected them, distorted
them, and cropped them. I made several dozen copies of each image and developed a
method that produced satisfying results with a few Photoshop tools and filters. One of
Picasso’s more abstract and emotionally powerful pieces in this series, a monochrome
drawing, was my first subject. The 21 images that came from this “original” constituted
the largest mural-sized piece in the show, and are also the preparatory “drawings” of
this body of work. The sheer size of this piece, however, suggests it is the culmination
of War Images. I hung them by clips in an overlapping row to create doubt about
whether or not this piece was meant to be so understood (Figure 9).65 The secondlargest piece, another monochrome mural (Figure 10), was the second piece I made,
and it was similarly hung.
65
This hanging method was the best way to fit these pieces on the wall from top to bottom, and
aesthetically it worked to eliminate many of the clips from view while increasing the unevenness
of the surface
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Figure 9. Photograph from War Images (Hughes, 2005). Artwork: Brian Hughes,
Untitled (21 Images), 2005.
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Figure 10. Photograph from War Images (Hughes, 2005). Artworks: Brian Hughes,
Untitled (9 Images), 2005 [left]. Brian Hughes, Untitled (6 of 7), 2005 [right].
These pieces contrasted with the more refined presentation and installation of
three pieces created from color reproductions of Picasso’s paintings: one diptych and
two polyptychs (each one composed of four panels). I made the polyptychs after the
initial monochrome murals. I made the diptych next, and only after all of these large
images found their place as the focus of my exhibition, did I turn my attention to the
smaller Picasso-like images that I imagined serving as “keys” to the larger works by
clearly referencing the “original” Picasso—a need which arose only after I saw how
abstract the large pieces had become. For each larger, multi-panel piece, I created a
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single 11” by 17” image. These smaller pieces turned out to be the most interesting part
of the exhibition, and artists and critics who saw the exhibition noted this. 66 While I
first made these pieces with the intention of preserving the reference to the specific
Picasso work that was being manipulated for the larger piece, several of the smaller
pieces became the intellectual culmination of my process (Figures 11-12). These pieces
represent my interpretation and understanding of Picasso’s work, as well as my
intention to communicate about the emotional experience of war.
66
One critic, Dan Kramarsky, found the smaller pieces to be the most serious “drawings” (personal
communication, February 5, 2005). Dan’s wife, Janet Cohen, is an artist who specializes in
conceptual drawing and his father is a serious collector of post-expressionist, minimalist drawings.
Right away he gravitated to a few of the small pieces in the show that are very abstract. He enjoyed
these because he could see my “hand” in them better, and I knew what he meant even though my
hand was mediated by layers of technology. His favorite piece was actually the culmination of this
body of work—the last piece I created (Figure 12).
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Figure 11. Brian Hughes, Untitled (6 of 7), 2005.
Figure 12. Brian Hughes, Untitled (7 of 7), 2005.
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Gadamer offers a novel picture of how humans experience tradition as an event,
and the artworks in War Images are partly meant to convey the manifold possibilities of
such experiences. As I interpreted Picasso’s originals, I considered the meaning of the
weeping woman whose portrait was depicted in a particular way by Picasso. I considered
how she looks and what that means for how she feels; I considered the construction of
the image; and I considered the effect of altering the image. In the following sections, I
use the experience of working with Picasso’s Weeping Woman paintings as an example
of the process of understanding.
2. The Nature of Understanding
The study of interpretation and understanding is historically related to the
study of biblical and legal texts. In the nineteenth century, scholars with an interest in
historical understanding such as Schleiermacher and Dilthey in the German tradition
expanded the discourse of hermeneutics to include general problems of interpretation
and understanding in the work of historiography.67 The problem was: How do we know
what really happened in the past if the only tools we have are historical documents and
our modern conceptions of the world (and conclusions drawn from applications of
67
See Gadamer (2002) for the long version of this story. For more on the current status of the human
sciences, see McDonald (1996).
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these tools are found to be inconsistent)? The discipline of hermeneutics recommends
methods for understanding historical events—recommendations that have since been
applied to “negotiating tradition” in general.
In the twentieth century, the problems of historiography were articulated even
more abstractly. Philosophers such as Paul Ricouer, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Jürgen
Habermas connected these problems of historiography to philosophical thinking about
epistemology. They asked questions such as: “How does language limit our
understanding of anything?” “Are there specifically human ways of understanding?”
With the worries of hermeneutics, these philosophers complicated the age-old
philosophical question, “What does it mean to know?” In Gadamer’s portrayal of
“philosophical hermeneutics,” art objects come alive as “traditionary material” with a
relationship to a practice, a life, and a language. Before we return to the matter of
subordination, it will be worthwhile to explicate Gadamer’s view of understanding.
A sustained philosophical look at the work of understanding privileges, if only
for a moment, some aspects of art practice. Though texts are often the subjects of
interpretation, for Gadamer the idea of a “text” is more loosely defined as a
Heideggerian “thing” (a familiar association for postmodernists), and works of art can
be such things. Understanding, Gadamer will be shown to say, is a dialogue about a
thing in a worldly context. His critique of the “radical subjectivization” of aesthetics is
largely about the relationship between a thing and its context, as well as the
philosophical misunderstanding of the nature (and significance) of dialogue. Turning
to artworks as texts means dialogues inspired by and surrounding art should be treated
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as nontrivial. Following Chapter V on MacIntyre’s view of subordination, this means
we are particularly interested in what these dialogues mean for artists and art practice.
Understanding, however, must be distinguished from other kinds of
communication. It is not a special task, for example, if people are already in agreement
with each other (Gadamer, 1960/2002, p. 180). Understanding means coming to an
agreement about a thing—and this as a matter of truth. While it is plain enough that a
certain amount of agreement is important to communities that engage in practices, the
process of understanding is multifaceted and complex—it is quite another matter to see
how agreement is essential to practices, and this is how the theory of subordination as
an educational good will contribute to a hermeneutical model of education.
2.1 Subordination as Coming to an Agreement
The notions of “experiencing tradition as an event” and “the process of
understanding” are intertwined. To complicate matters, both notions must be
understood in terms of an agreement about a thing, as Gadamer emphasizes the
“dialogical process where two positions or points of view find their way to agreement on
one and the same particular reality or subject matter” (Bubner, 1994, p. 69). To
consider tradition or understanding as matters of agreement is to consider them from
a relational perspective—a perspective which relates back to education. This is the first
of three perspectives in this chapter which allow us to distinguish between more and
less pronounced cases of subordination.
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The matter of agreement is important because it emphasizes the social nature of
practices. Artists, for example, are not likely to always (or immediately) agree about the
truth of an artwork. The same can be said of artists and their audience. That is, the
“facts of life” are often muddled in artistic representation. The work of coming to an
agreement about a subject matter involves an “I” and a “Thou” who reconcile different
substantive experiences. This was the case, for example, when I appropriated Picasso’s
imagery to make meaningful art about war and emotion that related to his work. Prior
to interpretation, according to Gadamer, neither his artworks nor mine represent these
subjects truthfully. It is only in and through artistic processes and the interpretation of
artistic processes that Picasso and I arrive at an agreement.
Understanding is bounded by a context. To understand a particular work of art,
for example, one is ultimately limited by the horizon of one’s experience and the
horizon of the work of art. We look at art through living eyes—eyes which have seen
the world in a particular way. A work of art, made by another person with different
worldly experiences than our own, represents a different way of looking. It would not,
however, be correct to say that the true meaning of the painting is wholly inaccessible
to an audience by virtue of these differences. There are also many things that an artist
and his or her audience have in common, and other knowledge of life that it would be
difficult to classify other than to simple assert that it is part of human experience.
It would be equally wrong-headed to assert, without qualification, that one
understands the painting, for with a welcome serious-mindedness about art we would
not want to reduce the painting to the mere sum total of the viewer’s previous
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experience. “A work has the character of an event, which goes beyond the subjectivity
both of the creator and the spectator or listener” (Gadamer, 1960/2002, p. 118). That
is, there is a real chance, in front of the Weeping Woman, for a person to expand his
understanding to include something of the world as it was in 1937 amidst the atrocities
of the Spanish Civil War. Or, likewise, there is a chance, in front of Untitled (7 of 7),
for a person to expand his understanding to include something of the world as it was
in 2005 during the American invasion of Iraq.
Balancing the immediate force of the “languages” one currently speaks (as a
viewer) with the strangeness and visual presence of the painting (made by another
artist) should be the goal for an observer interested in the meaning of Picasso’s work
(i.e., with an interest in historical truth). In the process of coming to an agreement
with Picasso about certain features of the world there is the possibility of both Picasso
and his audience undergoing a transformation. That Picasso himself is no longer alive,
and the notion of him changing lacks sense, there is nevertheless a sense in which his
identity, along with a painting, undergoes a change after having been encountered by
others. An art historian interested in the meaning of this painting, for example, would
have to have some account of people like us taking an interest in it.
2.2 Subordination as a Path of Understanding
The scenario of viewing an artwork is a relatively straightforward case of
coming to an agreement when compared to educational scenarios—scenarios when
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both the I and Thou are participants in a shared practice. To respond to the question I
asked in Chapter II—“In what way could exposure to my professors’ practices have
enhanced my education?”—we have to turn to more complex cases. Educational
scenarios involve the matter of how artists undergo processes of understanding while
also creating works of art. When understanding is sustained over time, as it often is
during the production of art, it is more difficult to describe as a Gadamerian
hermeneuticist. Art making is a messy process—not only often materially, but often
conceptually so. Indeed, many philosophical investigations in the twentieth century
show the process of understanding to be varied and replete with idiosyncrasies and
possibilities (Haste, 1996; Greene, 1995; Mink, 1987). In this section, the process of
coming to an agreement will be subsumed under the matter of an artist’s experience of
a “path of understanding.” The basic argument remains: there is a kind of art making
that involves coming to agreements with others. But the twists and turns made by
artists change the content of such agreements.
According to Gadamer, understanding takes the shape of a dialogue. The
dialogue leads the interpreter onto a path of understanding which is defined as an
ongoing movement between understanding “the parts” and “the whole” of a thing. In
so describing understanding with the metaphor of a path, Gadamer’s concern is for the
possibility of truth in the human sciences after the “subjectivization of aesthetics”—his
name for the undesirable view of subjectivity that sees individuals’ aesthetic experiences
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as totally isolated, and therefore, as yielding knowledge with no claim to truth.68
Aesthetic experience, on this view, is highly personal, and aesthetic knowledge is really
no knowledge at all. To accept this view of human experience is tantamount to
believing, in an epistemological sense, that everyone only experiences the landscape of
his or her own island: I can tell my friend about the path through the woods and the
vegetation on the far shore, but she can only imagine these details in comparison to the
Martian topography of her own island. Human experience is imagined to be radically
individualistic.
In contrast to this unworldly aesthetics, Gadamer argues that we inhabit the
same landscape. Our experience is our own only in the sense that we have a “bodied”
perspective, but by traversing the same paths, encountering the same horizons, and
anchoring our language to shared experience, we are able to map out the shared world.
With a view to this alleged case, Dewey saw both the very essence of science and the
possibility of educational relationships. He says, “the map orders individual experiences,
connecting them with one another irrespective of the local and temporal circumstances
and accidents of their original discovery” (Dewey, 1990, p. 198), and that the map “puts
the net product of past experience in the form which makes it most available for the
future” (p. 199). Dewey strongly urges us to remember that it is the explorer’s notes
from his or her daring, exploratory journey that makes map-making possible.
68
Gadamer’s concern if for universal truth, otherwise known as “truth with a capital ‘T,’’ and not
merely subjective and contingent truths. The difference between these two notions of truth is a
persistent worry of contemporary philosophy. Nagel (1999) offers a sober view of the difficulty, but
also the possibility, of universal truth through his work on objectivity.
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Gadamer’s concept of the path of understanding renews the spirit of this metaphor.
Philosophical hermeneutics shows us how we both use the map and live the life of the
explorer at the same time.
As the I, an artist may encounter the Weeping Woman as a depiction of a
subject such as a certain kind of suffering. He is able to recognize this experience
because it is a specific case of a broader, widespread human experience. As the Thou,
the painting represents the suffering known to Picasso. A dialogue begins when the I
and Thou are not in agreement about this subject. One aspect of Gadamer’s view is that
there would be a common view of this particular kind of suffering were it not obscured
by that which makes it present: language, or more specifically in this particular case, the
tradition of painting. Tradition is the historical condition that is coextensive with the
practice. Tradition allows us to expand our knowledge by “closing a distance” (in this
case, the distance of time and place between Picasso and myself) at the cost of possible
misunderstandings. The occasion for entering into a dialogue about suffering is an
event supervened upon by a tradition in which an I and Thou may eventually agree.
This is what is meant when Gadamer says, “[subject matter] is the path and goal of
mutual understanding” (Gadamer, 1960/2002, p. 180). Insofar as tradition is receptive
to the dialogue, a shared view of suffering becomes (to a greater or lesser degree) part
of the true meaning of the painting. This only begins to describe, however, the
scenario of the artist as viewer.
Even as a viewer, the artist enters into a significant dialogue with another artist.
This much is conveyed by the example of someone coming to an agreement with
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Picasso about suffering. But the path of understanding, as a second perspective from
which we can judge subordination, can be more circuitous than a single case of
agreement. In this process of coming to an agreement, the subject of suffering will
elicit questions about tradition—questions which will not be equally interesting, or
intelligible, to everyone. And not all questions will be equally important to
understanding. The most interesting questions, from the perspective of art education,
are often those that dwell on the relationship between the meaning of a subject (such
as suffering) and a tradition of the arts (such as portrait painting). For the
philosophical hermeneuticist, questioning is a behavior that tells us more about this
relationship for an artist as a student of painting.
The significance of questioning for Gadamer is related to his theory of the
hermeneutic circle as the form of the process of understanding in “historical
consciousness.”69 The circle is a metaphor that “describes understanding as the
interplay of the movement of tradition and the movement of the interpreter”
(Gadamer, 1960/2002, p. 293). It is an idea that captures the dialogical relation between
the parts and the whole as opposite poles on a spectrum of conceptualization. In the
example of suffering, it is the difference between what suffering can mean and what a
particular case adds to understanding. Neither a general concept nor the meaning of a
particular case is independent of one another, and the circle reminds us of their
69
The notion of historical consciousness is central to hermeneutics. For more on historical
consciousness as an explanatory framework for knowledge, see Gadamer’s (1960/2002) critique of
Dilthey’s analysis of knowledge, especially pp. 231-242.
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interrelationship during the process of understanding. It is not, however, a metaphor
that makes sense of agreement (i.e., a shared experience); our circle is our own.
Questioning is shaped this way because students arrive on the scene with a
relationship to a tradition. Indeed, we have a relationship to many practices, and as
artists, these relationships take the form of prejudices. “[An] initial meaning emerges
only because he is reading the text with particular expectations in regard to a certain
meaning” (Gadamer, 1960/2002, p. 267). The concept of prejudice is precisely that
which makes us expectant of and receptive to meaning. For Gadamer, a prejudice is a
positive valence of personality. “The meaning of ‘belonging’—i.e., the element of
tradition in our historical-hermeneutical activity—is fulfilled in the commonality of
fundamental, enabling prejudices” (p. 295). In this way, prejudices can both make one
receptive to a thing and make one’s reception of a thing unique. Gadamer shows that
this is not a radically subjective uniqueness because each person has, in their own
peculiar way, inherited their prejudices from tradition. Thus, when a thing addresses
us, and we wish to understand tradition, we need to foreground our prejudices (p.
269). If a student is not conscious of his or her biases, he or she will not learn what a
practice has to offer. The student will not share the experience of living as an artist
within a community of practitioners.
The act of posing questions is related to the suspension of one’s prejudices. As
Gadamer says “all suspension of judgments and hence, a fortiori, of prejudices, has the
logical structure of a question” (Gadamer, 1960/2002, p. 299). In this way, the
foregrounding of prejudices can lead to the suspension of judgment. To suspend one’s
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judgment opens a space for questioning. Whereas prejudices normally foreclose the
process of understanding, questions embrace dialogue. Questions allow us to look
more closely: “Why does she look terrified?” “Why is she painted in primary colors?” “Is
that a tissue or veil of tears?” We look at the painting for questions, not answers. This
enables a student to relate to an artist in the way that subordination requires—he or
she can “get inside” the mind of the artist and ask the questions that the artist may
have asked. It is a first step toward meeting MacIntyre’s requirement that
subordination involve a practitioner’s acceptance of the authority of standards of
excellence within a practice. To apprehend a painting as a answer to a question is an
essential condition for trusting that another artist has achieved excellence in painting.
This will become clearer as the relationship between two artists is described as the
substance of tradition in the following section. For now it is enough to see that
subordination is made possible by questioning.
Gadamer (1960/2002) says, “the text must be understood as an answer to a real
question” (p. 374), and by this he means that I discover something in the painting that
makes a difference to me. This echoes Dewey’s Pragmatism as discussed as “art for
one’s self” in Chapter II. The example of War Images (Hughes, 2005) makes clear how
questioning can lead an artist to a subject such as suffering a painting represents to
him. Picasso’s suffering became the subject of my inquiry, and the generative source of
the exhibition. For Gadamer, “the most important thing is the question that the text
puts to us” (p. 373). This may be a question such as, “What does this painting of a
weeping woman portray?” I confronted Picasso’s artworks and the ideas of sadness,
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hysteria, grief, and suffering came to my mind—responses that reflect how one’s
response is complicated by the form of painting (the tradition of which does not have
only one weeping woman). The painting “speaks to us from the past” (p. 374), poses
this question to the viewer, and in response to the question the viewer can “attempt to
reconstruct the question to which the traditionary text is the answer” (p. 374). The
viewer will remember weeping women he or she has seen, remember what it feels like
to weep, and so on. These experiences are not Picasso’s, but his experience, his
understanding, and his artistry inform them. In this way, we comprehend and develop
a common question with Picasso.
The potential of art as inquiry is circumscribed by this path of understanding
in, around, and through works of art. A painting may contain many questions,
however, and some are not recognizably our own—understanding involves these
questions too, and “the fusion of horizons” is Gadamer’s name for the convergence of
“historical” questions and our own. That is, a question allows us to ask, alongside a
text, questions posed by a wider community. The question to which Weeping Woman
is an answer for us encompasses Picasso’s experience as well as ours, and is a question
for which artists seek the truth. “The historical movement of human life consists in
the fact that it is never absolutely bound to any one standpoint, and hence can never
have a truly closed horizon” (Gadamer, 1960/2002, p. 304). A viewer—a visitor to a
museum, a researcher on the internet, or an artist in his studio—will not have
circumscribed tradition once and for all and achieved an “objective” understanding of
suffering through this process of questioning, but the painting creates a shared
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experience that is made possible by standards of inquiry and obedience to rules. 70
Subordination affords viewers access to this experience and allows artists to speak, in
this way, on behalf of tradition.
2.3 Subordination as a Traditionary Event
The concept of a traditionary event is yet a third perspective of philosophical
hermeneutics that describes the matter of subordination in light of education. It is
clear by now that one may engage understanding to a greater or lesser degree—that
there are better and worse ways to seek the truth. Sometimes we have the patience to
look closely at a painting, sometimes we are interested in questions a painting does not
speak to, and sometimes we have no interest in a dialogue at all. When we do enter into
dialogue, and we are lucky enough to have the tools we need to bring our selves to the
process of understanding, we are still faced with a difficult cognitive task. This is the
task of negotiating the process of understanding as a traditionary event. To this end,
Gadamer discusses the ideal balance for dialogue as a passage between presentism and
historicism. These two terms represent poles on a spectrum of our familiarity with a
70
Artists, on this account, have a very difficult road ahead. The more fragmented artistic practices
and traditions become, the more difficult it will be to make art for an audience. Strategy will prevail.
Artists who develop oeuvres with pedestrian imagery may increase the likelihood that an audience
will be able to understand their work. Galleries and museums that specialize in specific “moments”
or “styles” of art may be a bigger draw for field trips. Art that is marketed in a specific region as
“local” art may gain a local following. And historians and critics who act as intermediaries
between the “artworld” and a wider audience and “make sense” of art may increase their
readership over that of their academic peers. All these occurrences can be understood as a
response to the difficulty in understanding what artists do and why they do it.
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thing, and bear out the optimal orientation for a person seeking to understand a part of
the world. To draw out the moral significance of understanding, I will call the
successful balance between presentism and historicism “hermeneutic excellence,” and
turn to the matter of hermeneutic excellence below. But first the meaning of
“familiarity” is discussed as a quality pertaining to things as “traditionary material” and
their role in traditionary events. By the end of this section, the definition of a
traditionary event should be clear.
The value of art is often judged according to its ability to evoke a fruitful
dialogue among experts (and not only living experts) about a subject that is preserved
“amid the ruins of time” (Gadamer, 1960/2002, p. 289). Yet even experts may not
always be interested in the same subject. They may be content with studying Picasso’s
technique of applying paint to the canvas, the composition of a painting, or some other
aspect of the piece. Indeed, when anyone enters into a dialogue with a work of art, they
are able to form questions about what they do not already know because of tradition.
Tradition is what addresses us—what commands our attention and speaks to us—when
we enter into a dialogue with a thing. This personification of tradition follows
MacIntyre’s claim that a practice is not only a living community:
To enter into a practice is to enter into a relationship not only with its
contemporary practitioners, but also with those who have preceded us in the
practice, particularly those whose achievements extended the reach of the
practice to its present point. (MacIntyre, 1984, p. 194)
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On this account, all individuals who share in the process of inquiry participate in a
MacIntyrian practice, and the notion of tradition refers to such a practice as a
community of inquiry.
The depiction of the historical nature of practices tends to go along with a
notion of tradition as an unbroken chain of practitioners in service of a practice. Alas,
this is a clumsy philosophical portrayal of the complex situation tradition describes.
Because the difference between a community and a tradition is not always well defined,
it is important to articulate how these terms will be distinguished here. Henceforth, I
follow Gadamer in personifying tradition because it is meant as an overarching
description of a community that takes on board the shared experience of that
community. But personification evokes the analogy to individual identity, and begs the
question of how individuals within a community are different from one another, and
may struggle to extend a practice in different ways. An important limit of this
definition of tradition, therefore, is to allow that it does not encompass all aspects of
identity, but is instead the imagined sum total of a community’s shared identity. It is
not understating the case to say that imagination, so employed, will only vaguely grasp
such matters.
Yet the notion of tradition is too important to cast aside. The confusion about
the boundary and nature of a tradition is less important than the way that it modifies
the notion of community. To talk about a community of artists, for example, refers to a
group that shares values, ideas about art, phone numbers, and so on. To say that a
group of artists share a tradition is to invoke MacIntyre’s special concept of a practice
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which, in turn, implies that the group shares a conception of excellence that emerges
from the work of a practice—it involves morality. Thus, the concept of tradition
references timeless features of a practice in a way community does not. If “community”
names the individuals who participate in a practice, then “tradition” names the ways in
which they participate. A traditionary event is an intersection of individual experience
and the life of a community. It is a moment when an artist confronts the reality of his
work—how art can be made, how it will be interpreted, what it means, and what
difference it will make. The matter of understanding is necessary for capturing
(philosophically) what is involved in this confrontation precisely because:
Hermeneutical consciousness is aware that its bond to this subject matter does
not consist in some self-evident, unquestioned unanimity, as in the case with
the unbroken stream of tradition. Hermeneutic work is based on a polarity of
familiarity and strangeness (Gadamer, 1960/2002, p. 295).
In giving us this concise statement about hermeneutic work, Gadamer expects
that we comprehend this richness of it. There is a strong relationship, for example,
between the content of both sentences. Gadamer is equating “familiarity” with
tradition’s “unbrokenness,” except he will later go on to say it is the individual who
actually experiences familiarity. In contrast to this quality, he equates “strangeness”
with an individual’s awareness of the “brokenness” of his historical consciousness.
These two terms also describe, in a more direct way, two extremes of a traditionary
event for an I and a Thou—presentism and historicism—to which I will turn below.
First, two other aspects of this passage warrant further discussion: 1) the hypothesis
about the artist (“hermeneutical consciousness”) being aware of the contingencies of
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nature, and 2) the evocative description of a cognitive task as a foundational pillar of
hermeneutic work. The nature of these observations is in view as Gadamer addresses
the problem of familiarity and strangeness as a relationship to tradition. He says:
Hermeneutics must start from the position that a person seeking to understand
something has a bond to the subject matter that comes into language through
the traditionary text and has, or acquires, a connection with the tradition from
which the text speaks. (Gadamer, 1960/2002, p. 295)
The struggle to understand a tradition is played out through attempts to
understand traditionary texts (traditionary material). To understand the purpose or
meaning of painting, one must first understand paintings, and the quality of one’s
understanding is predicated on one’s understandings. The experience of familiarity and
strangeness are implicated in both aspects of this process, and both “levels” of
understanding implicate the movement of understanding between familiarity and
strangeness—historical consciousness on its “circular” path. Gadamer helpfully
distinguishes between these two levels by pushing back the problem of how we arrive at
more general (or “universal”) modes of understanding, which he discusses under the
rubric of “horizons.” This leaves the matter of how we understand a practice such as
painting as the subject of understanding, “properly” understood. From this perspective,
tradition is indeed a “self-evident, unquestioned unanimity,” because an individual’s
historical consciousness cannot overcome his or her situated perspective even though
he or she may be aware of its limitations. Indeed, it is this situation that historical
consciousness hopes to overcome by understanding history (i.e., the subject of
understanding, “philosophically” understood), for the ability to paint for a community
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is partly discovered in and through encounters with historical horizons. When this
hope of historical consciousness supervenes on a practitioner’s work, this work is
rightly understood as a traditionary event.
For the sake of philosophy, Gadamer says, “everything contained in historical
consciousness is in fact embraced by a single historical horizon” (Gadamer, 1960/2002,
p. 304). While his words elicit a strange picture of the artist (any artist) as potentially in
full agreement with the world, he means this to be true. But this is a claim MacIntyre’s
concept of a practice, and the definition of internal goods it entails, serves to refute. At
least, the concept of practice helps to tease apart a strong version of Gadamer’s claim
from a weak one, and the theory of subordination as an educational good shows why we
should prefer the weak claim over skepticism about the strong one. Whereas the
strong claim takes Gadamer’s claim seriously, the weak claim amends it with the caveat
that it is too general to ever be disproved. If it were not for the philosophical purpose
Gadamer intends, such a theory may as well be thrown out. That purpose is, instead,
part of his defense of the human sciences. While such an intent may or may not be in
service of my work here to give a more general account of subordination as an
educational good, it should be set aside but not thrown out. Preserving the weak claim
means we can dodge the outright rejection of the possibility of a unifying horizon, and
by association, objectivity. It still aspires to Gadamer’s defense of the human sciences,
but it is more modest. A weak version of his claim could go as follows: “Most things in
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historical consciousness may be embraced by a single historical horizon of a practice.”71
This does, after all, appear to be the ambition of tradition, whose appearance as an
unbroken stream is an effect of the nature of understanding, and a result of the
embodied human experience of horizons.
The concept of the “horizon” animates Gadamer’s discussion of historical
consciousness because he is concerned with “the superior breadth of vision that the
person who is trying to understand must have” (Gadamer, 1960/2002, p. 305). Perhaps
what is startling about Gadamer’s view is that this “superior breadth of vision” is so
often associated with philosophical understanding. The introduction of a weak view of
tradition may temper his claim yet again. In this case, our understanding of the “person
who is trying to understand” is modified by our awareness of practices as a site of
understanding. Understanding may be quite different from one practice to another,
and one’s attempt to understand the arts, for example, must necessarily be different
that one’s attempt to understand sports. Portrait painting requires a person to engage
different processes than fishing—it hardly warrants comparison, except from the
perspective of philosophy, and this is Gadamer’s (and partly my own) practice-based
point of view. The special case that some practices aspire to have horizons that span the
71
It is worth noting here, if only as an aside, that the popularity of sports may be a result of this quality
of historical consciousness. Most sports meet MacIntyre’s definition of practices. But they are,
additionally, surprisingly engaging from a spectator’s point of view. Perhaps due to the clear (and
visceral) nature of excellence in sports, as well as the clearly stated rules of engagement, it is easy
to comprehend a fairly comprehensive historical horizon. That is, sports wear tradition on their
sleeve, and often literally so. In light of this example, Gadamer’s notion of an embrace makes more
sense, for we see how being privy to a single historical horizon makes us feel good—we enjoy
understanding what is going on, and knowing why one outcome is better than another.
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“knowledge” of other practices emerges from history, and it is a nonobvious and
nontrivial point that this is ever more than an aspiration. While both MacIntyre and
Gadamer explore the possibility and consequences of these cases, I will not explore
them further here. It is enough to grant that the world is replete with diverse practices
and more and less comprehensive horizons of understanding that emerge from them.
This will only be seen as too weak a statement from both Gadamerian and MacIntyrian
points of view.
The point of defending a weak view is to envisage a stronger theory. Here, this
will come at the cost of admitting to some doubt about the precision of applications of
moral philosophy. A stronger theory is imagined here as more closely wedded to
educational philosophy (and psychology) rather than normative philosophy. Hence,
Gadamer’s interest in traditionary events as encounters with historical horizons takes
on less significance as it pertains to philosophical understanding, and more significance
as it relates to the work of carrying a practice forward—MacIntyre’s term for the
intersection of practices and moral traditions (by which he means shared visions of
virtue and the good life). By emphasizing the role of subordination in education
generally, I am attempting to shift the burden of proof for moral philosophy to
practice-specific cases of achievement. That is, I am interested in committing moral
philosophers to a project whereby moral excellence is defined in an ongoing manner by
educational excellence, which is further defined as the achievement of subordination in
a practice, understood as the culmination of a traditionary event. Moral excellence still
names what educational excellence cannot: that one cannot attain the vision that a
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single historical horizon affords by standing outside of tradition. We stand within it,
and from this position it is all too easy to think that they we are already in agreement
with one another. In the following section, this argument culminates in the synthesis
of moral philosophy and hermeneutics as an articulation of the process of
understanding as an educational ideal.
2.4 Subordination as Hermeneutic Excellence
Everyone who engages tradition negotiates experiences of the present and the
past so as to move into the horizon that “embraces the historical depths of our selfconsciousness” (Gadamer, 1960/2002, p. 304). To achieve hermeneutic excellence,
therefore, we must avoid both “presentism” and “historicism”—too much reliance on
the present or the past, respectively, that distorts understanding. Gadamer describes
presentism as the perspective that overemphasizes our language. Simplistic though it
may seem, this could be, for example, to think that the Weeping Woman is about
wearing unstylish clothing. Gadamer (1960/2002) says,
We are always affected, in hope and fear, by what is nearest to us, and hence we
approach the testimony of the past under its influence. Thus it is constantly
necessary to guard against overhasty assimilating the past to our own
expectations of meaning. Only then can we listen to tradition in a way that
permits it to make its own meaning heard. (p. 305)
To avoid presentism, we must bracket out our prejudices to the best of our
ability and “listen” to tradition. Presentism is a common mistake of understanding, for
it is easy to assimilate a question with what we already know. Whereas what we know
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from one practice may first appear to be perfectly analogous to another practice, this is
seldom the case. As MacIntyre (1984) tells us, the patience of a fisherman is different
from the patience of a chess player because of the technical skills involved and the
different ends toward which those skills are directed (p. 193). When a student enters
into a practice, it may be difficult to grasp the particular ends involved, and an
experienced practitioner may continue to feel this way as his or her exposure to a
practice increases over time. Avoiding presentism means trusting that a practice has a
tradition into which it is worth entering. And so, avoiding presentism means actively
suspending one’s judgment.
The matter of presentism brings attention to a similarity between different
degrees of the experience. A student might have a limited exposure to a practice while a
teacher might have many years of experience participating in, or learning about, a
practice. This is an important difference, yet the model of subordination is the same:
there is a tradition to which a practitioner subordinates himself or herself. Confusion
about this matter may arise for several reasons. 1) Students often subordinate
themselves to other people (who are often “teachers”), whereas mature practitioners
subordinate themselves to a more invisible network of people, both alive and dead. 2)
Students are often more concerned with increasing their exposure to a practice,
whereas mature practitioners are often concerned with deepening their understanding
of one aspect of a practice. 3) Students may be noncommittal in their relationship to a
practice, whereas mature practitioners have often made vocational decisions related to
their ongoing commitments to a practice. And 4) Students may literally have to
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suspend their incredulity about the significance of another practitioner’s achievement,
whereas mature practitioners, with a more comprehensive understanding of a
tradition, are willing to accommodate diversity. These are only a few of the differences
between practitioners with different degrees of experience within a practice, yet they
suggest a divergence in two degrees of subordination: the subordination of the mature
practitioner to tradition, and the subordination of the student practitioner to other
individuals. While these are two modes of the same process of understanding, it is now
clear why MacIntyre eschews the notion of education, teaching, or learning as a
practice—these are all part of the regular operations of other practices. As I argued in
Chapter V, however, this duality should not deter us from so recognizing these
activities as practices in their own right. This recognition potentially brings attention
to the special task of hermeneutic excellence, as well as the distinctiveness of diverse
practices as ways of life.72
Subordination, as the “look and feel” of hermeneutic excellence, is a feature of
traditionary events. Surprisingly perhaps, this means it is necessary for the work of
coming to an agreement. An I and Thou do not subordinate themselves to one another
per se, but to the tradition of a shared practice. Presentism is the complex mistake of
not upholding the process of understanding in good faith at any point during one’s
work within a practice, and avoiding it is only one part of what subordination entails.
72
Higgins (2003a) aptly calls this distinctiveness a “moral phenomenology.”
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To achieve hermeneutic excellence, we must also avoid “historicism,” which Gadamer
(1960/2002) defines as follows:
We think we understand when we see the past from a historical standpoint—
i.e., transpose ourselves into the historical situation and try to reconstruct the
historical horizon. In fact, however, we have given up the claim to find in the
past any truth that is valid and intelligible for ourselves. (p. 303)
Historicism, seen as a mistake of historical consciousness, is the opposite of
presentism. It is a loss of self in the process of understanding, an obstruction to
inquiry. It is a loss of bearing on why tradition matters for us. Historicism disrupts the
connection between the process of understanding and the good life that is achieved
through a practice. It is the impulse to make art for art’s sake while we stand idly by and
watch a war ravage a nation. Art as inquiry desires more than mere continuation—it is
the culmination of a tradition in the present. Art as inquiry is a Pragmatic project that
makes a difference in our world. The criterion of excellence that emerges from between
these two extremes of hermeneutic consciousness is the ability to speak with tradition
and animate traditionary material as an answer to a common question. It is coming to
an agreement about the meaning of a work of art with the intention of making it more
powerful. In this way, an exemplary work of art orients us in our time. This does not
contradict Gadamer’s idea that tradition is embraced by a single horizon. Tradition,
Gadamer says, is that which gives us traction to change the world:
In fact the important thing is to recognize temporal distance as a positive and
productive condition enabling understanding. It is not a yawning abyss but is
filled with the continuity of custom and tradition, in the light of which
everything handed down presents itself to us. (p. 297)
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Hermeneutic excellence is excellence in education alongside excellence in other
practices. It describes an activity that goes hand in hand with subordination, and it is
central to the concept of morality that I have argued for thus far. It is a quality of a
person’s process of understanding that connects one’s self to other selves—it is an
excellence of community building. Subordination does not only consist in hermeneutic
excellence, but can follow from it. Subordination, for example, is an attitude an art
student may adopt, after he has understood the Weeping Woman for the first time, to
suspend his prejudices and engage a community of artists as a maker of art.
A so-called “genius practitioner” experiences tradition in the same way as we
have seen above, but her experience, unlike just any practitioner’s, is attended by a kind
of hermeneutic excellence that constitutes the quality of her genius. In Gadamer’s
language, we can describe both the depth and clarity of her historical consciousness on
paths of understanding, and her path between presentism and historicism that makes
possible a fusion of horizons. As I have endeavored to show in this chapter, these are
two interdependent features of her “historical being.” With this process of
understanding in view, we can now describe subordination from the perspective of a
student with two additional caveats. 1) It is what occurs throughout a traditionary
event when the person who is subordinated to, the teacher, has a prior relationship to
traditionary material that a student is confronting. And 2) it is a name for when a
student acknowledges that his teacher’s experience is more nuanced than his own.
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3. Verticality in Practices
Subordination sustains tension between the activity of making art and the
process of understanding art. Historically, this tension is familiar to arts practitioners
as the gap between creation and viewership and, as such, is an aporia of aesthetic
philosophy. Looking at a work of art, the modern viewer asks, “What does it mean to
me?” or “What is the artist saying?”—these are not meant as two sides of the same
question, though we are now able to see this compartmentalization of tradition as a
mischaracterization of the process of understanding.
Recognizing this problem is especially important when the viewer is an arts
practitioner, no matter how novice or expert. The subjectivization of aesthetics, for
example, can be understood as a deep misconception about artists’ ability to oscillate
between art making and viewership—between presentism and historicism. For
Gadamer, this tension is positive. It is the open space for the student-artist’s
educational questions to emerge. According to MacIntyre, this emergence is the
essence of the vitality of practices in general, without which (to paraphrase MacIntyre)
human powers to achieve excellence, and the human conceptions of the ends and
goods involved cannot be extended. For Pragmatists such as Dewey, this is the ability of
a self to transform the world.
The picture of practitioners’ education reveals a unity within tradition. The
experience of tradition in the arts—practices in which there are tangible products that
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are often overtly symbolic of untimely connections between past, present, and future
human actions—adds to artists’ self-understanding as a community with a shared
orientation towards moral life. Genius can now be rightly valued as a concept that
restores verticality to the experience of interpersonal relationships in practices, and, in
educational terms, makes the good of subordination more intelligible in the multipractice community educators call “the social world.” It is just another case where the
potential for achievement comes at the cost of a philosophical tension.
4. Conclusion
Hermeneutic excellence implies two directions for art (for art practice): art for
tradition and art for students. It describes an ideal process of engaging tradition, and it
is equally applicable for the point of view of the novice practitioner and the mature
practitioner. Hermeneutic consciousness is an orientation toward practice that
postulates a tradition. According to MacIntyre’s definition, it is definitive of practice
because it creates a sense of verticality in a practice for all practitioners.
It is now evident how subordination proceeds as a relation between two
individuals in a practice, and we can describe subordination with additional caveats.
Hermeneutic excellence describes a practitioner’s cognitive process of solving the
problems of a practice. It is only possible to work within a practice in this way once an
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awareness of excellence is achieved, and the appearance of art objects as “original” and
the art practitioner as “exemplary” are potential by-products of this mode of creation.
Subordination, understood as one part of hermeneutic excellence, is a
compelling account of genius. Genius is a confluence of many things, but it also has a
moral meaning that obtains within a community of artists. For artists, it is important
that genius is not only a matter of being the “right person at the right time,” but
instead (or in addition to) it is the achievement of subordination over the course of a
lifetime. The embodiment of this achievement as a work of art, or a whole oeuvre, is
not only what qualifies one as an excellent artist, but it is also a hallmark of a practice as
a moral one—a practice with a “live” (as Dewey might say) tradition. Further
development of these themes will show us how artists can avoid the idealization of
embodied traditionary authority in the arts, while locating its value as an educational
good. In Part III, I discuss how Kant’s observations about genius intersect with the
theory of hermeneutic excellence as moral excellence.
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PART III–CRITIQUE OF GENIUS
[C]ome close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried
before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose.
Don’t write love poems; avoid those forms that are too
facile and ordinary: they are the hardest to work with, and
it takes a great, fully ripened power to create something
individual where good, even glorious, traditions exist in
abundance. So rescue yourself from these general themes
and write about what your everyday life offers you;
describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass
through your mind and your belief in some kind of
beauty—describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble
sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things
around you, the images from your dreams, and the
objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems
poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that
you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches…—
And if out of this turning-within, out of this immersion
in your own world, poems come, then you will not think
of asking anyone whether they are any good or not… A
work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is
the only way one can judge it.
Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903-1908/1986, pp. 6-9.
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VII–MORALITY AS SUCH
1. The Metaphysical Tradition
Part III of my study of artistic genius begins by returning to a vital
philosophical contribution to the study of art. In Chapters IV–VI, it was shown that
the way we think about artists has implications for the way we think about genius. The
same will be true for how we think about aesthetics in general. Kant’s Critique of the
Power of Judgment (1793/2000) served as a touchstone for generations of aesthetic
philosophers, so I will now turn to his writing on art and genius to bring his views to
bear on the matter of hermeneutic excellence. Understanding how he conceptualized
the relation between artists and art will contribute to the theory of the educational role
of subordination in moral life, and entering into a dialogue with Kant is also a rite of
passage for any theory that aspires to be taken seriously as philosophy. Henrich (1992)
summarizes the significance of Kant’s critique for aesthetics in the following way:
It combines and reconstructs the analyses of aesthetic predicates and the
aesthetic attitude that emerged in Leibniz’s and Locke’s schools, as they have
been formulated by philosophers like Alexander Baumgarten and Johann Georg
Sulzer on the one hand and like Hume and Burke on the other. But it also
elevated the aesthetic theory to a new level by integrating it into the framework
of a new epistemology that Kant had worked out in the Critique of Pure Reason
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based on the view that what we call “reason” consists in a complex interaction of
various epistemic operations. (p. 29)
The conceptual connection between art and knowledge Kant charts out plays a
pivotal role in our understanding of art as inquiry, and it is essential to the moral view
of genius. Though this is perhaps not the result Kant had in mind, I believe it
adequately captures an outcome of his metaphysics.73 Thus, the “scientific” devaluation
of art practices along with other human sciences can be seen as a direct consequence of
the belief that reason is so constituted by epistemological complexity. This is exactly
how I do not wish Chapter VI to be read. Though in a text such as this one (my
dissertation) there may be an abundance of references to “dialogue,” discussion,” and
discourse,” these terms should not be taken literally. Practices may differ as to the
mode of discourse—painters paint to each other, musicians play for each other, and
chemists look through microscopes together—and this should not be passed off as a
trivial matter. While they often also speak in an “ordinary” language, this should not be
mistaken as a “primary” mode of communication when we are referring to a practice.
Aesthetic philosophy after Kant, however, was overwhelmed by the project of
reconciling the many languages of practices with the emerging model of the mind.
Living in the aftermath of this debacle, we will benefit from a return to the watershed
moment in aesthetics that Kant’s theory represents.
73
For a helpful biographical story of Kant’s interest in aesthetics, see Henrich (1992), especially
Chapter 2. Certain facts bring to light how Kant was able to strategically commingle discourses in
aesthetics and epistemology.
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The purpose of this chapter will be to once again return to the moment when
we first encounter art practice, and remember what excellence looks like. This is a
moment before we understood what philosophical hermeneutics has to offer, so the
discussion of the awareness of aesthetic excellence that follows must have several parts.
First, we must agree on what counts as “aesthetic,” and do so in a way that leaves open
some of the most difficult questions about the moral nature of human experience. It is
this work that I began in Chapter IV. Secondly, there must be a qualification of
excellence, and this will here take the form of a discussion of beauty that, in turn, will
be shown to ground the discussion of exemplarity that it precedes. Third, the outcome
of the awareness of aesthetic excellence should be given, and here it will be shown to
give rise to questions about artists’ experiences as makers of art. This is an exegesis of
Kant’s philosophy that should extend and deepen the depiction of art practice begun in
Chapters I and II.
2. The Way Kant Saw Nature in the Subject
Kant’s reflection on art has been influential in the widespread conceptualization
of art and its value, and the richness of the philosophical dialogue surrounding his
writing demonstrates its lasting influence.74 His corpus serves as a dense confluence of
74
Today, scholars who work in the domain of natural science (“scientists”) are rarely interested in
the transcendental foundations of their work. Although some are, they tend to gravitate toward
philosophy. From a humanistic vantage, this is lamentable, as dialogues that would otherwise
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concepts that affect how art is received, how art is made, and how art is taught.
Though significantly incongruous with contemporary dialogues about education,
Kant’s thinking lends itself to my critique.75 His view of genius is a direct precursor to
the Romantic view that impacted the artworld in the nineteenth century, changing
forever the lives of artists like Gauguin who became superstars and icons of the
Western canon. For Kant, the concept of genius, with its roots in the arts, plays an
important role in securing a definition of judgment that he found lacking in the
Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1998) and the Critique of Practical Reason (1788/1996).
As he worked on his Critiques over time, he came to believe that “judgment” is the
name for a necessary bridge between human reason and nature (Guyer, 1979).
His writing on art informs my moral conception of genius and bears on the
matter of subordination, as he relates genius to judgment via beauty. According to
Kant, beauty is a phenomenal quality of “true” works of art. Kant’s theory of judgment,
educate (i.e., enlighten) the public about the interests, standards, and powers of scientific work is, at
best, sustained by outsiders, or at worst, nonexistent. As a consequence of this state of affairs,
philosophers have been made to become expert metaphysicians about work they never get to do.
This is part of Kant’s legacy. The enduring promise of the Enlightenment is the promise that
humans can know the world and transform it. I imagine the critique of genius as part of the project
of building a scientific method from the ground up. The danger of this foundation, however, is the
possibility of not getting very far or failing to undertake a transformative project at all. But the
opposite is also possible. As I hope to show, to begin from within the domain of aesthetics and once
again enter into the Enlightenment project has the potential to engage the imagination of a living
community in a shared quest for truth, beauty, and goodness.
75
The irony will not be lost on some that I am reading a translation of Kant. This is not a great worry
to me, as this Kant—the translated Kant—is quite remarkable in his own right. As hermeneutics
shows us, the problem of translation is hardly specific to translation between languages.
Translations of his writing have no doubt compounded the interminable disagreement over how
Kant should be read, but the problem of translation is only a symptom of the difficulty of reading
Kant in the first place. For a discussion of the problems of translation, see (Gram, 1982), especially
Chapter 1.
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therefore, puts forward a conception of beauty that is pivotal for art practice. A close
reading of his aesthetics (sic) reveals the relation of genius to the overarching project
of his three major Critiques. Before turning to this relation, I should provide at least
the barest description of my interpretation of his philosophical projects: I understand
Kant’s transcendental philosophy to be a set of critiques that, when considered as a
whole, create a world (by describing its boundaries) within which a theory of reason,
and therefore a vision of the good life, is defensible. In this way, Kant’s philosophy
frames the project of the Enlightenment as an agreement on a “rational” discourse that
can mobilize moral action and serve as a foundation of a good and just community
(Hills, 2004). In this way, Kant is commonly regarded as leading modern philosophy’s
preoccupation with epistemology. And although the “problem of knowledge” is
foregrounded in the Critiques, I would like to advocate a reappraisal of this topic as
only one way to understand Kant’s concerns.
The notion of genius arises in Kant’s discussion of fine art at the end of the
Analytic of the Sublime, but I read these passages (§30 – §54) as a continuation of the
Analytic of the Beautiful.76 Though Kant’s concept of the sublime articulates a
relationship between the human mind and nature that better positions his acceptance
of artworks as specific instances of beauty, I will not say much about it here. In
76
The phrase “aesthetic judgment,” however, is misleading. It conjures up an image of a judgment
that is wholly aesthetic, or about something that is thought to be aesthetic. By contrast, the
overarching title of this part of the critique is “Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment,” and so
it seems as if “the aesthetic” is only one aspect of judgment. I read Kant as intending this later
meaning, as the problem of judgment arises from his earlier critiques that are concerned with
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contrast to beauty, he theorizes the sublime as a magnitude of nature that the mind
does not acquiesce a priori or through phenomenal experience (Kant, 1793/2000, pp.
131-134). Beauty, he seems to say, is something we innately understand, something “in
which the subject feels itself as it is affected by the representation” (p. 89). I cannot help
but feel some unease at this premise, but it resonates with my experience as a young
artist in the presence of great art. For this reason, I entertain the possibility that his
view is representative of a nascent experience of art as representation. It is difficult,
however, to reconcile this view with MacIntyre’s theory of internal goods, as one
should not innately understand what one does not experience as a practitioner. Kant’s
theory falls into place when we equate representation with exposure—Kant’s view of
innate understanding is closely wedded to the experience of seeing.
Along these lines, Kant describes the relationship between beauty and nature,
where nature is beautiful without form (i.e., sublime), and art “can only be called
beautiful if we are aware that it is art and yet it looks to us like nature” (p. 185). Both
beauty and nature, it seems, are known to us through art. Genius, proposed as the
source of beautiful art (p. 186), would seem to be a vehicle for understanding
everything beautiful and natural, but this will prove not to be the case. The shifting
role of nature in Kant’s description of genius allows for a more ordinary faculty to play
the role of comprehending beauty in nature: imagination.
reason, practical reason, imagination, understanding, and an so on. Kant himself may
intentionally equivocate at times, and my intent here is only to bring attention to this matter.
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2.1 What Counts as Nature
Genius is not a key concept of Kant’s positive theory of judgment. For example,
Crawford (2003) says Kant unambiguously claims that artists (in general) create
aesthetic ideas. On a reading the Dialectic of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment,
Crawford draws out the conclusion of Kant’s claim that “genius manifests itself in the
creation and presentation of aesthetic ideas, which result from the exercise of the
productive imagination” (p. 161). Crawford argues, “for Kant, talent, spirit, and genius
do not represent distinct faculties; rather they comprise ways of setting in motion one’s
other ordinary faculties, especially imagination” (p. 160). Serving merely as a prompt
for artists to apply the powers of reason to art making, genius appears more like the
poetic inspiration it referred to in ancient times. This is genius depicted as a wayside
attraction for a society on its way from the gallery of fine objects to the sitting room of
smoke and pleasant critique—from beauty to goodness.
Kant partially elucidates his conception of nature when he says, “genius is the
talent (natural gift) that gives the rule to art” [his clarification](Kant, 1793/2000, p.
186). The “rule” must at least be understood as that which makes beautiful art “a kind
of representation that is purposive in itself and, though without end, nevertheless
promotes the cultivation of the mental powers for sociable communication” (Kant,
1793/2000, p. 185). Kant clarifies the role of the “rule of nature” further by noting that
since the “inborn faculty of the artist” is itself a part of nature, “genius is the inborn
predisposition of the mind… through which nature gives the rule to art” [translator’s
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emphasis](Kant, 1793/2000, p. 186). Thus, the “giving” is a natural phenomenon of
which beauty is an outward manifestation.
Offering a different perspective of the matter of beauty, Kant says, “taste as it
were makes possible the transition from sensible charm to the habitual moral interest”
(Kant, 1793/2000, p. 228). His philosophical followers have made various and sordid
attempts to read him consistently on these matters. Crawford (2003) tentatively puts
forward the argument that for Kant “the ultimate significance of beauty in art and the
explanation for the experience of it being inherently and universally pleasurable for us
lies in its being a symbol of morality” (p. 165). Guyer (1979) cites R. K. Elliott’s
sympathy with the view that “if it were not for the moral analogy there could be no
judgments of taste, but only private preferences and judgments of objective perfection”
(cited in Guyer, p. 352). Guyer therefore asserts that Elliott commits himself to
Crawford’s view “that perception or sensitivity to beauty may be demanded of everyone
because beauty is a symbol of the morally good, and sensitivity to such a symbol may be
demanded as part of the demand of morality itself” (Guyer, 1979, p. 353). But Guyer
suggests neither that the connection between beauty and morality in Kant’s theory is
clear, nor that it would have the outcome of universality claimed by Crawford and
Elliott if it were shown to be the case. This retreat from the analogy between beauty and
morality may somewhat redeem genius in the eyes of moral philosophers interested in
genius’ relationship to nature.
Guyer offers a lengthy reading of Kant to show why the additional matter of
morality is unhelpful. He turns to Kant’s passages on communicability and sociability
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and reads Kant as claiming “the inclination to society creates an interest in the means
to society, among which is a regard to universal communicability; so such a regard is
demanded of others” (Guyer, 1979, p. 364). That beautiful objects can be valued
because they offer us the ability to communicate helps make sense of Kant’s claim that
taste is a basis for detecting the rule of art—and therefore genius. But, as Guyer
argues, this does not helpfully complete the deduction of aesthetic judgment. It does
not show how we come to have the faculty of taste.
As a way out of this lack of explanation for taste, Crawford deflates Kant’s view
of genius. He says, “to take on a form that allows it to be communicated and stand the
test of judgment, genius must be combined with taste” (Crawford, 2003, p. 160). Taste
is crucial, he says, for the enterprise of art to be successful. But this only begs the
question, Why genius? Why not another characteristic of the mind such as quickness
or memory? Taste can go a long way as a basis for art, and this was no doubt Kant’s
worry when he distinguished fine art from all other kinds or mechanical production
and imitation. But, for a theory of nature as the vector of beauty, a better description of
how we come to have either taste or genius is needed.
Kant does not focus on the process whereby geniuses become productive
artists. Instead, he offers a view of genius that points to imagination and
understanding as key aspects of aesthetic judgment. He claims harmony between
imagination and understanding is the basis of aesthetic response, and beauty is the
quality of an object that elicits such a response. About this lack of attention to the
formative aspect of appreciation for art, Guyer (1979) suggests the jig is up:
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Having denied that a standard for either the estimation or the production of
beauty can be found in the realm of determinate concepts and intentions, he
concludes that this standard must be found “in what is mere nature in the
subject, but which cannot be comprehended under rules or concepts, that is to
say, the supersensible substratum of all [the subject’s] faculties (which no
concept of understanding can attain), and consequently in that in relation to
which all of our cognitive faculties are to be made harmonious, this being the
ultimate end given by the intelligible [basis] of our nature.” (p. 341) [the
author’s translation]
By pushing back the question this far, there seems to be no way for Kant to talk
about the nature of genius other than to say it is “nature” itself. This is disappointing,
but even more, it leaves us with a sense of Kant’s exasperation about the matter of
universality when it comes to human affairs. Guyer shows Kant to be eliding his own
rules of engagement by invoking the noumenal realm, and furthermore, that it is not
clear that it advances his deduction of judgment.
Kant’s view of genius is muddled. While he has been previously understood to
have made clear and determinate arguments about artists and art practice, his ideas fall
flat in light of a stricter definition of practice. His overt concern with conceptualizing a
model of the mind (i.e., epistemology) trumps his interest in understanding the
meaning of “nature” as a locus of beauty. Engaging him in this dialogue, however, has
allowed us to see what aesthetics looks like with only a thin concept of tradition. When
aesthetic excellence is reduced to the surface of things, beauty is indeed a mysterious
and elusive quality—and the concept of genius is one part of a quick philosophical fix.
In Section 3.3, the matters of sociability and communicability of art—outlined here as
art’s universal qualities—will be explored and linked to the idea of tradition. This will
secure subordination’s role at two moments in art practice: 1) as a good that allows
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novice practitioners to experience the distinctive qualities of a practice, and 2) as a
special kind of ongoing relationship among artists.
2.2 Two Kinds of Beauty
Kant says that there are two kinds of beauty: free beauty and adherent beauty.
“The first supposes no concept of what the object ought to be; the second does
presuppose such a concept and the perfection of the object in accordance with it” (Kant,
1793/2000, p. 114). This is reminiscent of his description of the difference between
beauty in nature and beauty in art, and draws out the matter of artistic excellence as
aesthetic perfection. Lyotard (1994) furthers our understanding of Kant’s move away
from the first kind of beauty as, “sublime feeling can be thought of as an extreme case
of the beautiful” (p. 75). Engaging other eighteenth-century philosophies of art, Kant
strategically attends to the matter of taste—the discernment of beauty. To better define
his theory of the faculty of taste in relation to his theory of judgment, Kant discusses
various fine arts and their relative worth. The perception that art is potentially
universally appealing frames his characterization about artistic genius from the outset.
He says, “one could even define taste as the faculty for [knowing] that which makes our
feeling in a given representation universally communicable” (Kant, 1793/2000, p. 175).
Nowhere, however, does he distinguish between educated or knowledgeable viewers of
art, nor more or less formal viewings, so I will take him to be evoking a sense of the
possibility of universality.
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Kant acknowledges that every art “presupposes rules.” He says, “beautiful art
cannot itself think up the rule in accordance with which it is to bring its product into
being” (p. 186). This is a misleading description, however, as the awkward phrase that
“art cannot itself think up the rule” follows from his broader hypothesis that aesthetic
judgment is not dependant on concepts. Art cannot be considered beautiful simply
because it is judged as following rules—an argument that reinforces his theory that
judging is not synonymous with reasoning. While beauty is perceived innately, reason
requires concepts for its determining ground.77 This is essentially how he concludes
that “nature in the subject” (p. 186) gives rule to art. Nature partly defines genius for
Kant, and this points to a durable (not only momentary or fleeting) characteristic of
artists who make beautiful art.
This says more about the logical structure of art as an artifact of experience
than the actual appearance of beautiful art. Perhaps it is optimistic to think that Kant’s
view of art and beauty does not narrow the field of art too much (to the exclusion of
“ugly” art), but Kant was not settling differences of taste. He was interested in taste as a
faculty that provided clues to the problem of a priori knowledge. By implying that
beauty is a quality by which we discern what counts as art, I take Kant as highlighting,
if indirectly, the importance of the appearance of art as evidence of an artist’s reason.
Whether or not an artist will be said to be a genius will ultimately depend on the
77
See Kant (1781/1998) for a discussion of the relation between concepts and understanding,
especially the On the Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding, pp. 219-244. He concludes
that understanding is a name for the mental faculty that provides cognition with rules.
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characteristics of his art. Besides being self-evidently a new rule of nature, however, the
excellence of beautiful art is not yet clear. In the next section, I turn to Kant’s
description of the art of genius as original and exemplary. These will be shown to be
key characteristics of beautiful art.
3. Boundaries of the Concept of Genius
Further consideration of Kant’s observations about genius informs our
historical reception of the concept. As I show in Chapter III and IV, psychologists,
educators, and philosophers often do not treat the meaning of genius in a principled
way—it is deployed as a highly specific term to denote achievement on a test or as a
catchall term for a set of desirable qualities or characteristics. Avoiding this conceptual
mess, Kant defines genius in relation to beauty—an effort that culminates in a twopronged theory of genius. We can guard against the capricious winds of popular
sentiment by following Kant, but also by showing how one part of his definition is
stronger than the other. This also suggests a strategy for defining the concept of
genius in general, and not only in relation to art practice.
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3.1 Two Kinds of Excellence
Beauty is at the center of the philosophical question about the relation between
the human mind and nature. As we saw above in Section 2.1, Kant discusses the
relation between beautiful art and genius in the section titled “Beautiful art is art of
genius” (§46) wherein the matter of nature begs the question of how beauty is defined.
Asking what sort of rule it is that genius gives to art, Kant struggles to define it. With
the case of a “judgment about the beautiful” (Kant, 1793/2000, p. 188), he appears to
discuss judgment with respect to his concern for the rules of art: namely, the act of
identifying beautiful art.78 The matter of identification, however, is vague and
intertwined with a conception of goodness. A short digression on this matter is called
for before turning to Kant’s two-pronged view of genius.
Beauty and goodness are both complex, and somewhat cumbersome,
philosophical concepts. Maria Eaton (1997) shows that beauty and goodness are
commonly either understood to be ontologically equivalent, or beauty is understood as
historically and conceptually dependent on a conception of goodness. She somewhat
prefers the former, but believes theory goes especially wrong (and our insight into both
art and morality is diminished) when Kantian formalism asserts a discrete separation
between the aesthetic and the ethical—a distinction that is to one end of the spectrum
78
Kant focuses on this matter of identification, without looking at the evidence of how artists use the
work of genius as a model. This is an important turn, and I will return to it below in a discussion of
exemplarity in Section 3.3.
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that helps us categorize different moments of experience, which we only really do in
retrospect anyway. This has led to an extended discourse of the relationship between
beauty and goodness, and because the meaning of goodness is no more settled that
beauty—indeed, it is perhaps infinitely more contested—this has become an
interminable discussion for aesthetic philosophers. Agreement about beauty, it seems,
requires a corresponding agreement ethics. As I have suggested in Chapter VI, and as
MacIntyre (1988) elsewhere shows, a mutual understanding is not tenable outside of a
particular tradition. At best, there will be moral traditions to which aestheticians may
belong, but it is unlikely those traditions will map neatly onto discursive communities
in aesthetic philosophy.
It should therefore be no surprise that philosophical difficulties abound when
beauty and goodness are treated as ontologically equivalent concepts. In the review of
recent literature in aesthetics, Eaton finds both a conception of a “formalistic priority”
that describes a way of making a moral decision by choosing style first and content
second, and a “psychological priority” that asserts a causal connection between a
person’s aesthetic activity and the quality of his or her moral reflection (Eaton, 1997).
She explains what it would mean for the “aesthetic” to be prior to the “ethical” by
showing how theories that claim to privilege the aesthetic often presuppose a concept
of moral goodness. So, she says, when Jefferson claims that certain kinds of cities make
for better citizens, he is really saying that inhabitants of those cities demonstrate
goodness—aesthetics is incidental to his vision (Eaton, 1997, p. 357).
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Eaton turns to Charles Peirce’s tripartite explanation of human experience as an
example of a theory that does succeed at giving priority to aesthetics, but at too high a
cost. In looking for an ultimate origin of human values, Peirce attributes aesthetic
theory to “firstness” which, according to Eaton, is “the quality of the felt world—the
world as inner, subjective experience” (Eaton, 1997, p. 357). And Eaton shows how
Peirce’s argument situates feelings beyond language, and therefore completely separate
from the ethical, which she argues is a legacy of Kant’s reasoning. She also cites
Foucault’s “general theory of the way in which human practices and institutions define
us as individuals, as communities, and as individuals-in-communities” as a view that
pays a great deal of attention to aesthetics (p. 358).79
Eaton finds all these views lacking a more comprehensive vision of ethics, even
if it seems to always loom in the background. She criticizes an untenable distinction
between aesthetic and ethical activity and argues for the “conceptual interdependence
view” of the relationship between aesthetics and ethics (Eaton, 1997). Of conceptual
interdependence, she says, “in order to understand morality and thus become a mature
moral person, one’s action must have both appropriate style and content, and this
requires aesthetic skills” (p. 361). In describing the process of developing those skills,
she says “aesthetics can become as important as ethics not because making an ethical
decision is like choosing wallpaper, but because it is like choosing one story over
79
Eaton (1997) claims Foucault’s work is representative of many postmodernists’ views of the role of
art practice, p. 359.
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another” (p. 362). Aesthetics, in other words, is a lot like ethics when understood apart
from art and art practices.
According to her theory, art can be good in two ways. 1) Art can be understood
as beautiful because it is seen as good. This may lead an audience to ascribe excellence
to the artist, and then 2) the artist’s art can be understood as good. This is not the
same “excellence” that I call hermeneutic excellence. Whereas for Eaton, beauty denotes
a representation of goodness in the mind of a viewer of art, artistic excellence is quite
independent of the appearance of art. It is possible that an artist may achieve excellence
in the more abstract sense of being a good scholar of art, and there may or may not be
sufficient evidence of this activity in the artist’s work. Indeed, there are more reasons
than not for this additional translation—the audience’s understanding—to fall short.
Kant’s concern with originality, as a first kind of excellence, should be
understood as an elaboration on Eaton’s first kind of excellence—the infusion of moral
deliberation in art. As such, it makes sense that aesthetic philosophers have dismantled
the metaphysics of originality and returned the discussion to the aporia of the beautygoodness discourse (I discuss this below in Section 3.2). The notion of beauty as a
natural quality of objects (both in nature and man-made) impacts the identification of
artists as excellent in an important way. Judgment about excellence is disconnected
from judgment about art. Art may be considered exemplary—a second kind of
excellence—whether or not its artist is purposefully engaging tradition. Where Kant
implied an automatic connection between exemplary art and genius, we can see it as
problematic. To show that the recognition of artists as geniuses rests on a further
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qualification does not imply that Kant was wrong, but shows his discussion of
judgment to be lacking nuances that virtue theory and hermeneutics bring to light. In
the following sections on originality and exemplarity, I conclude the development of my
critique of genius with a Kantian picture of the achievement of genius.
3.2 Originality
As if he had art education in mind, Kant says, “genius is a talent for producing
that for which no determinate rule can be given, not a predisposition of skill for that
which can be learned in accordance with some rule” (Kant, 1793/2000, p. 186).
Originality, according to Kant, is one characteristic of art created by a genius. Adding
the qualification that the products of genius are exemplary, serving others as models
for imitation, Kant describes art as being “a standard or a rule for judging” (p. 187).
What counts as originality has been much discussed in aesthetics, and these
discussions have been both antagonistic and beneficial to art practice. From a postRomantic perspective, art practice cannot be unhinged from tradition. Already in the
early twentieth century, in his comparison of the arts to languages in The Principles of
Art, Collingwood (1938/1958) articulated a view of the artist’s role in making art
meaningful. His description of the relationship between artists and audiences (quoted
at the beginning of Part II of my dissertation) succinctly captures the difficulty of
attributing the meaningfulness of beauty to the intention of the artist. It explains the
frequent misattribution of the term “original,” and suggests a route to properly
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understanding meaning-making—a route was that was taken by artists themselves
under the banner of “Modernity.” Rosalind Krauss, for example, theorized a critical
discourse on originality in the following way:
Modernism and the avant-garde are functions of what we could call the
discourse of originality, and that that discourse serves much wider interests—
and is thus fueled by more diverse institutions—than the restricted circle of
professional art-making. (Krauss, 1981, p. 58)
Krauss argues that artists have actively grappled with notions of origins,
original art, and originality and that this largely defines Modernism as a style of art
making. This is a reasonable outcome of Kant’s description of genius as producing art
with no determinant rules, including precedents in art. Indeed, the process of imitating
other art is seen as inimical to genius. Krauss discusses the pervasiveness of the
concept as follows:
The theme of originality, encompassing as it does the notions of authenticity,
originals, and origins, is the shared discursive practice of the museum, the
historian, and the maker of art. And throughout the nineteenth century all of
these institutions were concerted, together, to find the mark, the warrant, the
certification of the original. (Krauss, 1981, p. 58)
Krauss’ description of the artworld’s attempt to seek out originality is quixotic
but unsettling. Kant’s hollow explanation about some artists’ ability to create original
art, not only did not deter artists from seeking recognition as geniuses, but it
apparently exacerbated their desire for it. Yet Kant looks at originality in art largely
from an non-artists’ perspective, and he does not overcome the limitations of this
perspective to better define artistic processes. In retrospect, the problems of attribution
discussed in Chapter IV provide an ample explanation for Kant’s view of originality.
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And MacIntyre’s theory of internal goods also points to Kant’s lack of detailed analysis
of artists or artworks as a symptom of his ascription of metaphysical properties to some
artists. The mistake of highlighting the appearance of originality as excellence,
however, does not mean Kant’s theory of judgment is irreparable. With his
observations of exemplarity, Kant locates beauty and genius in relation to
subordination and anticipates educational problems.
The model of historical consciousness developed in Chapter VI makes clearer
the matter of originality in the arts. According to this model, to understand a work of
art as an original, one foregrounds it against something that already exists. If the claim
of originality is to have teeth, then it is implied that it is foregrounded against a
sufficient set of things. This need not be a comprehensive claim about all aspects of the
work of art, but merely an attribute we value. This weak claim of originality is still
tenable. If, for example, artists consider Picasso to be a genius, and they give evidence
for this claim by pointing to his depiction of suffering, then they are saying, in effect,
that the Weeping Woman makes a kind of suffering available to us that was not
previously portrayed in art. The boldness of this claim, and ultimately its truthfulness,
rests on our understanding of tradition; it is strengthened by our relative expertise on
both suffering and artful depictions of suffering.
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3.3 Exemplarity
On Kant’s account, geniuses create original and exemplary works of art, yet
these qualities are only partly intelligible against his conception of beauty. The analysis
of originality partly sharpens our understanding of genius—Kant’s thinking on the
matter is convoluted, and others have draw out its significance. Exemplarity is entirely
another matter. More questions arise than are settled by Kant’s conception of
aesthetics, but his discussion of the role of exemplarity in art practice offers yet more
clues about his understanding of genius. In this section I show how exemplarity can be
decoupled from the myth of originality, and how this modifies Kant’s theory of taste in
a useful way.
To make clear how beautiful art differs from mere mechanical art (art that one
can learn to make), Kant notes that there is indeed a mechanical element to all art of
genius, and that it is an essential condition (Kant, 1793/2000, p. 188). The mechanical
element serves as an end for genius, without which a work of genius would be “a mere
product of chance” (p. 189). This appearance of “academic correctness” is combined
with “the originality of his talent” in “the character of genius” and his work (p. 189).
Kant warns against the presumption that originality alone is proof of genius, and
slights young artists who blow off academic training. “Genius can only provide rich
material for products of art; its elaboration and form require a talent that has been
academically trained, in order to make a use of it that can stand up to the power of
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judgment” (p. 189). This emphasis on elaboration, details, and form follows from his
discussion of imitation.
Kant determines that beautiful art serves “as a model not for copying, but for
imitation” (Kant, 1793/2000, p. 188)—a distinction which seems to gesture to the
ephemeral process of art making, and not merely the result. He continues, “the ideas of
the artist arouse similar ideas in his apprentice if nature has equipped him with a
similar proportion of mental powers” (p. 188). This shows the process of manifesting
genius in art to be much more complex than seems possible by his earlier definition
that entailed a view of nature. He also describes the models of art as “the only means
for transmitting [rules of nature] posterity” (p. 188). Though the end of imitation is
not yet clear, it appears to be a strange and important affair. Interestingly, Kant also
says genius “cannot itself describe or indicate scientifically how it brings its product
into being” (p. 187). The author of beautiful art, he says, cannot know how the “ideas
for it” came into being, and cannot communicate to others how to produce similar
objects (p. 187). Given this claim, did Kant envision artists speculating about the
origins of their art and being wildly wrong?80 And what effect might this have on
students learning to make art?
80
The intellectual provenance of a product of genius should be of great interest to art educators. With
everything that can go into an artwork, it would seem there is still plenty to talk about, but the
extent to which nature imparts beauty in art without corresponding knowledge in the artist will
have consequences for the expected outcomes of art education.
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Since artworks attributed to genius are often executed with great skill, the
argument goes, genius is therefore often equated with skill.81 Kant maintains, however,
that genius cannot be taught. He does not say art making cannot be learned, but rather
that the quality of fineness is not directly a product of education. This makes sense if we
consider the kind of attention to detail one student might possess relative to another.
When skill accompanies such attentiveness, it is often the case that students are lauded
as future artists, but Kant’s qualification that genius should not be equated with skill
challenges this conception of excellence. This disjunction, along with the emphasis on
originality, should thus be understood as a clarification about the matter of
development. Kant is claiming that artists possess a power that is necessary for the
production of beautiful art prior to education. Hence, the appearance of beauty is only
an outward clue of an artist’s so-called “innate talent.”
Kant argues that the “facility for learning” does not count as genius (Kant,
1793/2000, p. 187). Since he qualifies this remark by stating that “learning is nothing
but imitation,” I take him to be referring to a procedural kind of learning such as rote
memorization. He makes a further claim that a person who “invents” in art and science,
and who is considered a “great mind” may still not be a genius “since just this sort of
thing could also have been learned, and thus still lies on the natural path of inquiry and
81
I am hard-pressed to come up with counterexamples. To those who would object to this point by
invoking the work of some modern and postmodern artists, I would point to artists such as Cy
Twombly who are understood as possessing great skill by art critics. As with so many areas of
artistic specialty, the uneducated viewer is often at a disadvantage to recognize meticulous or
thoughtful production techniques. Even the “blank canvases” of minimalism are more complicated
than they first appear.
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reflection” (p. 187). This distinction raises problems for recognizing genius, and maybe
Kant does not intend for such identifications to take place. He may only be proposing
the theory to serve as an explanation for certain kinds of art.
Education cannot, on this view, transform someone into a genius who was not
already so disposed to be transformed. The importance of education, however, remains
an open question. The matters of skill and communication lead to additional insights
about exemplarity. Kant describes a “weak” kind of art education in the following way:
[S]uch a skill cannot be communicated, but is apportioned to each immediately
from the hand of nature, and thus dies with him, until nature one day similarly
endows another, who needs nothing more than an example in order to let the
talent of which he is aware operate in a similar way. (Kant, 1793/2000, p. 188)82
Two new aspects of art making are proposed by this passage: 1) every artist is unique,
and 2), the genius needs at least one example to activate his genius. What kind of
example does this need to be? This passage’s proximity to the discussion of the work of
genius as exemplary suggests understanding this work as such a model. If this is the
case, then Kant is offering a glimpse of a world where genius effectively passes from
person to another.
At the risk of suggesting exemplarity is merely a result of judgment, a question
should be put to Kant: If the products of genius serve as models, whom exactly do they
serve and to what end? Both questions, the for whom and the for what, are important.
82
The personification of nature here—the hand of nature bestowing talent on a newborn artist—is
telling of Kant’s aversion to an explanation that directly invokes God. Even though he turns to
theology in his critique of the teleological power of judgment, he pushes back the problem here and
consistently refers to nature as the source of genius.
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There are multiple ways in which art can be a model—not just as a model for other art,
for example, but as a religious totem or a political touchstone. Cases where art serves
as a model for the creation of other art just happen to be a central concern for art
educators. Kant may be proposing that there are some artists who are geniuses and
some who are not, but then this begs an educational question: why are non-geniuses
striving to make “merely” decorative art? Kant may otherwise be proposing that while
imitating art cannot be educational for genius, imitation can serve some other end for
the artist-genius. That is, he grants that there are features of the world that supervene
on the production of art.
To grant that art may not always be a contemplation of morality reflects diverse
traditions in the artworld since Kant’s time (or, if they are actually “new,” then they
should be seen as elaborations and expansions of traditional possibilities or tendencies
in art). Modern art pushed the boundaries of the traditional artworld—its practitioners
and its institutions—in ways that defied “conservative” expectations. Ugly art, for
example, became a real possibility as the meaning of beauty was brought under further
scrutiny in the twentieth century. In wider artworld discourses, this shift underscores
the meaning of the term “Modernism” and makes sense of much twentieth century art
and art practices.
Kant has not yet heard this news. Originality and exemplarity imply a strange
kind of audience. Originality implies the audience is cut off from tradition. Exemplarity,
a less ephemeral quality than originality, suffers a similar fate in Kant’s work, but
resonates as a nascent recognition of the importance of tradition in art practices. Kant
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does not explain why a work of art is more often understood as exemplary than the
artist who made it, but artists today should strive to know more than Kant so art does
not serve as a superficial basis of judgment. One outcome of the critique of genius is,
therefore, an imperative for artists to take responsibility for the reception of their
work. As Collingwood (1938/1958) observed, “we have inherited a long tradition,
beginning in the late eighteenth century with the cult of 'genius', and lasting all
through the nineteenth, which is inimical to this” (p. 312). The critique of genius has
the potential to release the artist’s moral impulse to assume that responsibility.
3.4 Summary
Taken together and in order, developments in philosophy reflect—indeed, help
bring about—moral qualities of art. Kant’s and Gadamer’s contributions further
problematize the achievement of subordination, though I argue their philosophies
position us to better understand the features of such relationships—relationships
MacIntyre implicates in the ongoing livelihood and development of practices. The
implications for education will be explored further in Chapter VIII.
Art, it seems, can be an intermediary through which one genius may serve as a
model for another genius. Thus, the work of art is not strictly the model—the beauty
of artistic products serves to strengthen the perception of the artist as a model. For the
moral nature of artistic genius to come alive, the qualities of a work of art essentially
must be mapped onto the artist—for then exemplarity is intelligible as a characteristic
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of genius. Does it make sense to call genius more or less than this? The circumstances
that lead up to and shape the creation of a work of art, however, are often a barrier to
intelligibility. Defining excellence with art practice in mind is a matter of adopting a
framework for understanding art making, which, if it is done well, will expand and
amplify the view of morality I have articulated above.
We need more philosophies of art. We need more moral philosophies. But each
of us should strive to construct one philosophy we can live by. I have here sought to
critique the concept of genius in such a way as to make it compatible with a paradigm
for my art practice—my paradigm by virtue that it both incorporates and propels my
philosophizing, and a shared paradigm so far as it enables participation among a greater
community. While these communities are inconstant (and judgments about art are
often arbitrary and capricious), genius can be rightly understood as an achievable ideal.
4. The Moral Wilderness
To adopt the view of morality I articulated in Chapters IV–VII is to somewhat
reverse directions from MacIntyre’s hope that morality can “emerge from the
wilderness” (MacIntyre, 1958). The diversity of traditions within tradition means
practices are likely to be fertile ground for educational experiences, but not at all as
elegantly ordered as MacIntyre imagines. I suspect MacIntyre denies teaching is a
practice because something like a “unity of the virtues” is less important in a world
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where teachers attend to the needs of individual, motivated learners. Having
scrutinized the kind of experience students must have to achieve excellence, it is clear
that the matter of trust is more important than unity. Genius, as a philosophical model
of excellence, may be most useful where trust is lacking.
Moral philosophers who imagine a top-down model of moral personality
propose a theory of unity where philosophy, as a higher-order virtue, engenders
rational and principled action. The critique of genius challenges this picture of
morality. The theory of hermeneutic excellence (qua subordination) as an educational
good is not meant to replace the theory of unity, but displace it. The quality of a
person’s relationship to tradition is meant to be open to interpretation, and
theoretically up-for-grabs. Whereas moral philosophers have, in the past, positioned
philosophical thinking—reflection—as central to the good life, I am proposing we adopt
a decentralized, distributed (across practices) view of moral excellence—moral
excellence as the achievement of subordination. Though I do not settle this dispute
here, it is now possible to pose several related questions.
First, since genius is a helpful rubric for excellence for art practice, I wonder if
we can postulate an ethics where practices are seen as ends in themselves, where no
explanation of “hypergoods” is necessary. This would be tantamount to a vision of
moral life where individuals are understood as ordering and balancing the pull of
multiple practices in no particular way—a very different view than one where we are
always guided by a shared telos such as democracy, freedom, etc.
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Second, if there are such shared visions of the good, is genius a more prevalent
and relevant telos in the contemporary world than other conceptions? This would go
along with the argument that individualism is a key self-conception of our age. If this
were a more fruitful way to predict behavior and intervene in social systems, then it
should displace “virtue” as an overarching model of ethics. For this to be a meaningful
change, it would have to be shown what the key distinctions between virtue and genius
are, in short, the difference between a genealogy of the good and a genealogy of
tradition. Such a change may sidestep some frequent mistakes of ethical discourse. The
question is not whether or not such a change is right, but whether it is right for us.
Given the far reach of formal education in the world today, I believe the discourse of
genius is not only more accessible, but more likely to culminate in diverse and fruitful
lives. The discourses of virtue, ethics, and especially morality are too easily shortcircuited by the question of “right and wrong.”
Another question that it is now possible to ask points in a different direction. If
hermeneutic excellence is extremely difficult to achieve (and only partly because of our
prejudices about excellence), why not leave it to chance? That is, why should educators
stake their livelihood on a project with such a low probability of success? This handsoff approach would not be so different from the current state of affairs in the artworld
(in and beyond educational institutions) where we simply let persons who are
“naturally” inclined to make art do what they prefer to do, and do not actively encourage
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everyone else to participate in art practices.83 Presumably, there would be enough
artists working on diverse enough projects to fulfill the current demand for aesthetic
objects—especially given the increasingly powerful scope of broadcasting and
networking technologies.
While this may indeed “suffice,” an initial objection could be that it fails on
account of other values we have and will likely continue to have. It abdicates our
responsibility as educators, which is (on a so-called “liberal” or “humanistic” account) to
give every person an extended opportunity to explore his or her interest in diverse
practices. Art educators are especially likely to bristle at the option of leaving art to
chance, knowing firsthand the kind of experiences hands-on participation in the arts
make possible. This underscores the premise that we value such experience in the first
place, but this might not always be the case. Rejecting “genius” and embracing “luck” as
a substitute for exemplarity cuts against the value we currently place on achievement,
but could potentially inspire the same—or even better—developmental outcomes
educators deem valuable.
This speculation reminds us that conceptualizing a moral nature of genius
remains problematic for theory even when it increases our understanding of art,
artists, and art practice. But theory always challenges practice—critique is at once a
resolution to this tension, and a symptom of it. And understanding, philosophers
83
There are many amazing exceptions to this charge, and I do not mean to diminish them. Good
schools, good museums, and good artists all contribute to the promotion of the arts. Still, is it not
possible to go further?
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remind us, is valuable in its own right. In the next and final Chapter, I turn to practical
outcomes for pedagogy that follow from the kind of relationships that an awareness of
genius, as a disposition for inheriting and solving the problems of a practice, has been
shown to make possible.
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VIII–WHY EDUCATION MATTERS
1. Where We Are Now
Where the moral nature of genius is eclipsed by a modern preoccupation with
“intelligence,” the hermeneutic power of genius is foreclosed. Thoughtful and
productive artists are met with saccharine appreciation instead of commitments to
engage in a shared process of understanding. The conceptual rehabilitation of genius
offers artists a strategy to recapture the imagination that overly hegemonic and sterile
institutions threaten to command and sell back to society in piecemeal. Likewise, an
awareness of artists’ historical task has the potential to strengthen artists’ public image
as conveyors of important human truths.
There is much confusion in communities of art education, on a philosophical
level, about what constitutes success in art practices and the arts in general. The
concept of genius sheds light on the matter. Its rehabilitation has implications for all
artists, and especially those artists who act as frontline ambassadors of the artworld: art
educators. Reclaiming this instrumental concept is part of the project of getting
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subordination right. This will not, however, be the end of the struggle for educators.
Just as genius may be misinterpreted as unrelated to hermeneutic excellence, artistic
inquiry will continue to tread a thin line between Kant’s “rationalistic” science and
postmodernism’s “moral relativism.” The first mistake will be to equate inquiry about
genius with artistic inquiry, and teachers will be responsible for helping students
understand the special nature of art making as inquiry.
Genius is an historically and theoretically bounded framework for evaluating
artists and their practices. It captures the force of artists’ ambitions as they aspire to
investigate and innovate—not dwell in delusion and dissatisfaction—and uphold art
practice as a thoroughgoing educational activity. The interpersonal dynamic of
hermeneutic excellence makes this possible, of which the achievement and
development of subordination in educational settings is only an initial outcome.
2. Awareness of Genius
There are a few ways in which genius can “matter” for education. One theme of
my study is to highlight the importance of the appearance of verticality in art practice
for subordination—this is the sense that geniuses support the education of other
artists as makers art. The other way to put this is that the concept of genius draws
artists further into art practice. My critique of genius is at once a premise and an
outcome of this view. That is, I employ a hermeneutic tactic to make the critique—my
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primary argument—stronger: I argue that verticality is important because it leads to
important recognition on behalf of students, and at the same time I claim
subordination (a potential result of that recognition) can strengthen a community’s
agreement about which practitioners are eminent. This agreement, in turn, makes
verticality possible. Additionally, I argue (in Chapter VI) that this outcome can make
the eminent practitioner more excellent (including, but not limited to, more
hermeneutically excellent). Thus, I show that hermeneutic excellence is at least partially
constitutive of genius, and argue that in conjunction with the production of
communicative art, it should be understood as the essence of the concept.
There is a need to tailor the concept of genius to fit this view, which I argue is
possible alongside a rehabilitation of the historical concept vis-à-vis Kant’s view of
nature. If one rejects the idea that the concept can be so rehabilitated, then a weaker
version of my primary argument still holds: excellent artists will be shown to do the
work of sustaining and extending a tradition of inquiry by orienting their art practice
within a community in the special way disclosed by philosophical hermeneutics.
Admittedly, this is a less innovative theory, as it does not depart too far from
MacIntyre’s view of practice and Gadamer’s view of tradition. It does, however, show
the special concept of tradition to be deepened by the special concept of practice, and
visa versa. A synthesis between this theory and the problem of genius, however,
captures the meaning of moral excellence in a more powerful way.
There are many possible objections to this philosophical undertaking. One can
object to 1) my positioning of ethics as a meaningful discourse for art, 2) my
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modifications to MacIntyre’s ethics, 3) the subsuming of hermeneutics under ethics, 4)
my interpretation of Kant’s metaphysics and its significance for morality, and 5) my
regard for the role of philosophy in art practice. I have tried to address all these
objections in the previous chapters, but often only implicitly. An explicit defense of all
these grounds will not be made here, as I believe they are already made elsewhere, and
more often than not, more deftly than I can manage. For example, I do not intend to
“prove” that subordination occurs, nor respond to critics who dislike the term.
The underlying assumption that subordination is important may be brought
under greater scrutiny. For the defense of this view, I must defer to MacIntyre’s ethics.
This is just one tactic to defer a conversation on “final ends,” for whether or not
subordination is understood as important within practices, or whether or not
skepticism bears on the role, definition, or even the existence of practices, this requires
another inquiry with a different foundation than the present one. Psychology may
provide even better conceptual tools for analysis of the matter of subordination, but it
will still lack the ideological grounding MacIntyre’s theory provides. Indeed, there will
be as many objections as there are threads of other philosophical arguments
supporting my critique. For my part, I will parse the implications of my critique in a few
more important ways.
Genius can also “matter” for education in the sense that the concept supports
the ethical framework I articulated in Chapters I, II, and V. This is a significant
recentering of the discourse of morality in relation to the arts, and achieves the goal of
further developing virtue ethics with art practice in mind. This offers artists a way to
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think about ethics in relation to art practice, and therefore strengthens the
interdisciplinary relationship between art and philosophy. I call attention to an
“awareness of genius” and not “awareness of the concept of genius” because it is only
the former that is constitutive of the phenomenon my critique seeks to explain. The
latter is a distinctly philosophical experience that is not necessarily achieved (to a matter
of degree) alongside the former. It is the awareness of geniuses that arises from the
awareness of tradition that forms the foundation of the experience of subordination.
From MacIntyre’s account of the three registers of moral life, we have extracted a
narrower and more descriptive theory of artistic genius. Not only is genius an
intersection of practice, narrative, and tradition, but now the concept signifies the way
artists relate to one another, learn from each other, and develop as members of
community.
Coinciding with this ethical framework is a new space for art teachers to discuss
the meaning of art, and these discussions are helpfully bounded by rich historical and
theoretical material. Teachers may welcome such a perspective, especially those teachers
who also work as “professional” artists. They may benefit intellectually, as well as
professionally in two senses: as professional artists and as professional teachers. They
may see their own work as an artist in a new light, and reconsider their role as teachers
as well. I will discuss the implications for pedagogy in the following section.
There are even more compelling conclusions to draw from the critique of
genius. That is, there are educational implications—ways that education matters for
the cultivation and manifestation of genius. The knowledge that a genius is (and has
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been) supported by his or her educational surroundings allows us to see art education
in a new way. Entertaining these implications means we have come a long way from the
Romantic view of genius as an innate gift or talent. And Kant’s metaphysics will never
be the same again. But neither will the view that “everyone is a genius” (or even
potentially a genius) be tenable. The details of subordination and hermeneutic
excellence make clear that there is a long road ahead for artists who will one day be
rightfully understood as geniuses.
Geniuses, however, still have the potential to cause real harm in practices,
especially practices that are delicate enterprises like art making. One might ask, “if X
can do Y so much better, why should I do Y at all?” While such doubt is unlikely to
change our moral orientation, it could easily derail endeavors that are complex,
frustrating at times, and not easily evaluated. The sense that the recognition of genius
is a matter of luck remains. But to the extent that we are complicit in that recognition,
we can be conscious of the kind of activity that accompanies the creation of works of
art that merit that recognition. As far as I can tell, there is no need to be decisive about
what kind of commitment to the arts or a community that such recognition need
entail. A person may produce one piece of meaningful art in his lifetime, or he may
produce thousands—either way, he may become a model for other artists. But this far
from automatic. Those who care about art practices must account for the success of
individuals who are recognized as geniuses, including the geniuses themselves, if not
only for the sake of one’s own clear-minded orientation in a practice, then for the
vitality of the educational institutions that support the ongoing life of the practice.
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Formal education is influential here for two reasons: 1) it consists of
institutions that support the work of artists, and 2) those institutions can make
available the moral tradition that includes the critique of genius. Though these two
aims intersect with one another, they are slightly different. The former aim can be
understood as a broad aim in terms of praxis—there are many ways for artists to
become more excellent, and as many ways for institutions to attend to that
development. The latter aim, however, refers more directly to an artist’s intellectual and
emotional sense of himself or herself.
The critique of genius serves critical functions when it is situated within
institutions of education. The several ways philosophy can make a difference for art
practice are as follows: 1) The art community, and therefore art practice, is disjoined
from its tradition by excessive historicism. 2) Arguments for creativity and aesthetic
experience further isolate the arts from existing paradigms of inquiry, and have been
rather unhelpful from a philosophical perspective.
Given modern preoccupations with identity, the critique of genius is well suited
for art educators. 1) It respects the dialogical limitations of the classroom by
acknowledging the private life of students and teachers. 2) A critique of genius
empowers educators to modify their teaching practice, without losing their autonomy.
3) Students take advice from educators seriously (e.g., because of the educational
context or the teacher’s work as an artist). 4) A teacher can use his or her judgment to
guide a student to look at a particular work of art in its context.
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Why does other exposure to the artworld not suffice? 1) One does not know
how to look for the salient parts of other artists’ practices (one does not see the “messy
bits”). 2) One does not automatically get a sense of the purpose of art practice that is
related to the purpose of inquiry. Art is often reduced to glossy pictures of finished
pieces (although it need not be, it all too easily is). Artworks in galleries and museums
are not presented as “works” of a living project, but “pieces” of the representational (i.e.
modernist) world. At best, art becomes a theory. At worst, it is only a commodity.
There are also disadvantages to the framework of hermeneutic excellence. Art
educators might ignore hermeneutic excellence and remain silent about paradigms that
support art education. This is understandable, as the subjectivization of aesthetics has
rendered art impotent in relation to other disciplines in institutions of education.
Remaining silent about the relation between knowledge about art and knowledge in
general essentially insulates art educators from both internal and external criticism.
That is, it is just too easy for artists and art teachers to be misunderstood.
This quietism likely has the undesirable effect of changing the environment of
art education. Instead of widespread and common discussion leading to shared inquiry,
inquiry, and therefore knowledge, is intensely local and parochial. This fragmentation
brings about a breakdown of (or circumvents a development of) the social structures
that engender and support trust within the art community. Subordination that is not
systematically supported may develop haphazardly and not be adequately sustained. Or
it may not occur at all.
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3. Implications for Pedagogy
Can a certain kind of “openness” on the part of the teacher invite
subordination? Several pedagogical options come to mind. 1) Teachers can point out
similarities between students’ art and well-known artists (but this is not very
compelling). 2) They can demonstrate their intellectual depth with insightful
comments/remarks (this too seems uninspired). 3) They can model a relationship to a
tradition or community of inquiry. Since the classroom can be a site of ongoing
dialogue, educators have an advantage over their professional peers in conveying their
knowledge of art practice, and I will discuss these strategies in this section.
Small differences in how artists relate to each other may affect artistic processes
and outcomes. There are many ways hermeneutic excellence is currently highlighted in
the studio classroom. Consider the following scenarios. Professors often have students
study the practices of other artists. They might point a particular student to a
particular artist. Professors make observations about students’ work. They might make
specific comments about one aspect of a process, effect, or habit. They might relate this
one thing to something another artist is known to do. From the perspective of
hermeneutics, they make connections—between students and professional artists;
between students and other people or ideas; from one student to another; from one
artist to another; and so on. These are some aspects of life in the studio classroom, and
they are, we imagine, essential components of art education.
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But does the possibility of subordination arise? Or as Maxine Greene might ask,
when does a student’s future open up to new possibilities? Any one of these possible
connections might be a sufficient experience on a given day. But in my own experience,
nothing came quite as close as those experiences wherein I felt increasingly connected
to a community. Activities where I was asked to work with another student made the
work of art come alive. (e.g., swapping drawings, a mural where everyone participates,
even group critique.) But there was one persistent problem: none of my classmates
were professional artists (although it was exciting to work with those few who were
more interested, versatile, etc.). Why did the most advanced artist in the room never
fully bring her self into the conversation or classroom activity? Why was a practice of
art making not being modeled in the liveliest way possible?
The professor is a unique representative of the artworld: a living, practicing,
experienced person with connections to a wider community of artists. There are,
however, numerous other reasons a professor might choose to not share her art
practice with her students: habit, doubt, shyness, an educational philosophy, time
constraints, a lack of a method for doing so, etc. Does the concept of hermeneutic
excellence provide a compelling story that trumps these reasons? I argue that it does,
and I believe there is more to say elsewhere about how it does according to a picture of
art as a mode of naturalistic inquiry. It is only important to consider how this sharing
is bounded by how hermeneutic excellence is recognizable in the first place.
Were a professor to make available certain aspects of his own art practice to his
students, he would be inviting students to enter into an already messy domain of
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understanding, interpretation, and meaning making. How would he present his
practice in an open but accurate way when it is probably the case that he is an artist for
the very reason that he would rather “show” than “tell”? Indeed, in this case of a
professor communicating anything, the articulation itself is a traditionary event for his
students. So, should we be optimistic that he could portray his hermeneutic excellence
visually? For that matter, can any artist who takes on a project other than one that
explicitly draws attention to the subject of hermeneutics?
I have my doubts. How can one prompt an audience to attend to what is
essentially the methodological component of art practice? Such precision would seem to
come at too high a price, and this worry may be similarly applied to any orchestrated
discussion of a “practice.” Perhaps to successfully negotiate such a process of
understanding (the kind imagined above) between a professor and her students,
everyone involved would have to be aware of the “educational languages” they speak,
and enter into the dialogue with a sense of what is at stake—why, for example, a
decision to deploy a cubist strategy for depicting space created the right emotional
atmosphere that the painting needed to convey a sense of sadness to a certain audience;
and how this decision arose from an offhanded remark by a cantankerous friend about
a George Braque painting. This seems a bit ambitious for the undergraduate studio.
Young artists are likely to experience skepticism about art practice—perhaps a
symptom of a perceived lack of talent. They may also find themselves confronting the
problem of relativism without proper philosophical tools (i.e., “why should I choose to
make art rather than to do X?”). Not surprisingly, art teachers have a variety of
240
classroom strategies to help students resist and overcome this existential crisis (e.g., by
acting as role models, giving students positive feedback, leading them through helpful
exercises, and so on). But art education is not always so structured, and art teachers
may not always deliver the psychological goods, so to speak. More likely, it seems a
student must be particularly ready to appreciate (or, to interpret) a moment of
hermeneutic excellence. And perhaps less sweeping recommendations for curricular
structures can produce more dramatic results. How? Consider the case where a
professor divulges too much information.
Unrealistic expectations about the kinds of lives artists are supposed to lead are
set in motion in culture at large. Professors, who are not usually on the short list of
artists likely to be reviewed in the “Arts” section of The New York Times and whose
work will likely not be studied by art historians, are caught in a bind. Should they not
direct students’ attention towards “model” (and therefore archetypal) artists? And they
do. And one can imagine the line of thought going: “Would it not be presumptuous to
inject my own art and artistic process into the educational dialogue at this point?”
What about those moments when reaching for the art history book is too
much? What about a moment when a student who has been deeply engaged in a
physical process of scratching a charcoal still life onto paper “comes up for air”? A
professor, who has been informally circulating around the studio, takes notice and
arrives at the student’s side to be a co-observer of the artwork-in-process. Instead of
offering a response that is meant to make connections between this work and the
student’s earlier work, or between this work and a renowned artist’s work, the
241
professor offers up a personal anecdote. “One time I…” Or, “When I was recently trying
to…” This is my modest philosophical recommendation.
Art educators have a wealth of first-hand experience of negotiating traditionary
events. They may not be geniuses in the broadest sense of the concept, but they are
granted special access to moments when human life is already open to new possibility.
The orientation of practitioners towards excellence of all kinds is only one reason such
utterances could make a significant impression on students. Humans are social
creatures and communities are ethereal structures we desire to create and inhabit.
Books, videos, and the Internet are media that cannot produce the possible richness of
exchanges between teachers and students.
Dialogues between individuals that emerge and take shape over time have the
greatest educational possibility in the studio. Provoking, guiding, and shaping dialogue
is the responsibility of educators interested in nourishing students’ attachment to the
intellectual and emotional work of art making. How every student learns to cultivate
his or her own hermeneutic excellence depends on how thoughtfully welcoming each
ambassador of the larger community of working artists chooses to be.
4. The Future of Art Education
The integration of art making and higher education is troubling for both art
and education. Current trends in education are a result of different conceptions of art,
242
artists, and art making which have supported different and often conflicting strategies
to fit artists into educational institutions (Efland, 1990; Singerman, 1999). Art
educators should better define art as inquiry, and then justify the claim that studio
artists can and should learn how to do it. As I demonstrated above, what I refer to as
inquiry begins where moral and educational philosophies converge around questions
about aesthetic, moral, and psychological aspects of art making.
There are many histories of art and artists. We are saddled with the history, for
example, of an elite group of artists treated as “gifted” or “spiritual” geniuses in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There is also the history of artwork that aspires to
transform its viewers, and yet another that speaks to the formalistic content in
artwork, and how this content reflects changes in the material and economic life of the
artist. And so on. If some art educators have been proponents of the notion that “only
the few persons destined to achieve greatness as artists,” then at least they were not
alone. On confronting history, we may find that art educators have been influenced by
the work of aestheticians, historians, and critics, but the complexity of tracing back the
influence of the concept of genius on art education should by now be clear.
While I one could argue that throughout history people have connected the
creation/invention of ‘good art’ to genius, it is just as likely that this is false. It is
difficult to imagine, beyond the horizon of our own culture, what it means for a person
to be a genius. Of the many modern concepts bound up in the concept of genius,
perhaps the most troublesome for us is that of individuality. And for cultures that
differ from our own (e.g.: England in the eighteenth century, the Renaissance in Italy,
243
or Plato’s Athens), it is difficult what to make of selfhood—and how individuals defined
themselves in terms of activities like art making. The concept of genius is on unsteady
historical ground because different systems of apprenticeship, different sources of
inspiration, and different social landscapes lead to a very different artistic identity. Even
the notion of “artist” can mislead us, suggesting as it does a Romantic vision of creation
rather than subordination. Due to these historical tensions, art educators must turn
inwards, as well as to tradition, to define art education.
If, for example, the undergraduate studio classroom exists firstly for the
purpose of making art, and there are many supposedly valid conceptions of what art is,
then what seems to be an ideal state of affairs for the artworld is bad for students in
institutions of liberal education: there is no ready-made educational paradigm (i.e.,
“curriculum”) to help students become forward-thinking art practitioners. This
concern is reflected in current educational research. While postmodernism widen
students’ conceptions of art and promote diversity (Stinespring, 2001), this is not itself
a curriculum that supports inquiry as a goal for art education. Without such a shared
foundation, can teachers locate their educative practice on an institutional map? How
can they justify their work as practitioners in liberal education without articulating
their relationship to a productive and fruitful tradition of art?
Presently, teachers cope with this lack of orientation at the classroom level, but
make very few systematic or sustained efforts to reconcile art making with inquiry or
liberal learning. Consequently, art students are not initiated into a community that is
in step with knowledge-centered traditions of higher education, and studio programs
244
are undervalued as sites of rigorous study. In contrast to this state of affairs, art
teachers should be able to articulate the relationship between art making and liberal
education and art students (i.e., students in the studio classroom) should contribute
practice-specific knowledge to the academic community. There are strong traditions of
inquiry in the visual arts, and practitioners in higher education should embrace them
as the pillars of an educational paradigm that is able to guide students who will
inevitably work within diverse traditions of art.
Studio education should no longer concern only the technical aspects of art
making—in addition to a modicum of art history, art theory, and art criticism, art
students should pose philosophical questions in the studio to understand the
knowledge that is embodied in art. Art and philosophy can be moral in this broad
sense: they are sites for questions such as “Why make art?” and “Why choose the life of
an artist?” which are variations of Socrates’ question, “How should one live?” The
current dearth of moral philosophy, so construed, in the context of art making in
higher education means that this important aspect of art proceeds only haphazardly, if
at all—each student in the studio classroom exists in relation to a milieu of popular
(and unpopular) conceptions of art by himself or herself. Understanding art making as
a context for inquiry should change our expectations for art education within the
culture of higher education. In this way, art practitioners will be able to add their voices
to conversations about the intersection of art and the world by making art, and also by
reading, thinking, and entering a dialogue about ideas, values, and beliefs that are
conceived and analyzed in wider discourse.
245
Art practitioners need a theory that responds to the discord between art making
and education at the institutional level. My dissertation may affirm the role of certain
side-constraints on teachers, students, and curriculums, but it also demonstrates that
art programs supported by an educational philosophy have the potential to support,
sustain, and carry forward the vital work of art making. By addressing art making in
this way, my philosophical argument contributes to the scholarship it advocates by
both reclaiming art inquiry as one essential component of liberal education and locating
its place among other disciplines. A moral theory that identifies how studio education
is fit for the culture of inquiry of higher education should have clear consequences for
pedagogy and offer practical guidance when we confront educational problems. The
critique of genius, carefully construed, is a vital part of such a theory.
246
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