The
Paradoxes of Art: A Phenomenological Investigation
by Alan
Paskow
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
2004
260 pp. Trade: $70.00
ISBN: 0-521-82833-3.
Reviewed by Robert Pepperell
"A small child once said to me"
‘You don’t draw Bugs Bunny,
you draw pictures of Bugs Bunny.’
. . . That’s a very profound observation
because it means that he thinks the characters
are alive, which, as far as I’m concerned,
is true." Chuck Jones, cited p. 80
It is taken for granted, in certain circles
anyway, that art is important – that
it matters to our lives. Commonplace and
readily exemplified as this belief may
be, it is something of another order to
explain why this is so. Why do we care
about literary characters whom we know
to be mere figments, or why are we moved
by a painted human figure when we know
it to be just pigment? Alan Paskow, an
eminent philosopher and specialist in
the thought of Heidegger and Kierkegaard,
is one of many to address the problem.
His solution, or at least his contribution,
is to posit an ontological state of affairs
that many would regard as unconventional
in current philosophical terms. To set
up the argument Paskow addresses the widely
discussed "paradox of fiction",
which stated simply is this:
1. Rational people identify emotionally
with fictional characters.
2. To emotionally identify with fictional
characters is to believe, in some sense,
they exist.
3. Yet rational persons do not believe
fictional characters exist.
We would not be convinced by Rick’s
acts of self-interest and selflessness
in Casablanca if we did not believe
he were a ‘realistic’ depiction,
and that the circumstances of his life
and personality were veridical determinants
of his behaviour. But few viewers would
also argue that he is really real
– even if he were based on a true
life person. We know just as well that
Bogart is acting a part (very well) such
that he brings the character of the troubled
bar owner "to life". Yet knowing
this does not diminish the emotional force
of the portrayal.
Philosophers (and others) have puzzled
long over this conundrum (usually citing
loftier literary examples) but as with
many similar paradoxes have failed to
defuse its inherent contradiction. Paskow’s
move is to return to Heidegger, principally
Being and Time and extract from
that a counter-intuitive world view at
odds with much current scientific and
philosophical discourse. The position
he defends can be summarised as follows:
1. Representations and the realities they
represent are not as distinct as Western
philosophers since Kant have assumed.
2. We treat the represented object, scene
or person to some extent in the same way
we would treat the real thing.
3. Therefore, the represented thing matters
to us in the same way that the real thing
would.
By hopping over the Cartesian boundary
that putatively separates mind from world,
the imagined from the real, Paskow helps
to revivify the sterile debate about whether
beauty is objective or subjective –
whether it exists in the minds of the
beholders or the world they behold. His
argument draws intellectual sustenance
from Heidegger’s most important work
and, in particular, his contention that
"self" and "world"
is a unitary phenomenon. The world for
Heidegger is not an external, remote domain
we observe through slits from within a
Cartesian mind-bunker; the world is the
very thing we are, including our outlooks,
dispositions, cultural and philosophical
orientations, and so on. In a sense "being-in-the-world"
amounts to "being-the-world".
On this basis, Paskow can claim:
". . . when we are captivated by
a painting [the characters in the painting]
are not merely taken to be the subjects
‘in our minds’, but . . . beings
who are ‘out there’, thus not
simply in an ‘ideal world’ that
is somehow related to our world . . .
but, strange as it may seem, ‘in
our world.’" (p. 26)
Insofar as works of art represent people,
places or object we would respond to in
certain ways in the "real world",
so we respond in like manner to the same
thing in imaginative form, and it is this
that accounts for the veridicality and
vitality of works of art. To take Vermeer’s
Girl with a Pearl Earring, Paskow
argues we should not regard such an art
work . . .
". . . as just a concept or image
merely in a person’s mind . . . but
as a being in its own right (e.g. a particular
young woman wearing a silver earring,
out there) as well as a being with a meaning
and significance that one takes implicitly
to pertain to one’s life . . . ."
(p. 64)
Given this, how then do we distinguish
between, say, a girl in a painting and
a girl in real life? Notwithstanding those
soap fans unable to discriminate between
actors and their on-screen personas, Paskow
asserts that we "know" a depiction
or portrayal is not real at the same
time as we believe it to be real.
Surely this is asserts a contradiction
that violates the philosophical requirement
for rational analysis? Not a contradiction,
Paskow says, but a case of "dual
vision" in which two separate conscious
agents (what he terms Consciousness1 and
Consciousness2) co-exist in the mind of
the beholder.
Consciousness1 is "credulous and
fully engaged" believing wholly in
the verisimilitude of the fiction. At
the same time, Consciousness2 tempers
its counterpart by observing or commenting
upon the fictional experience, drawing
it back into the world of shared reality.
That is to say, on a personal level one
believes that characters to be real, but
on a social level one recognises their
fictitiousness. Although a provocative
assertion, Paskow cites Plato in his defence
(p. 79n). In The Republic,
Plato observes that we often override
our own impulses with "better thoughts";
we can, in effect, argue ourselves out
of a particular sentiment or course of
action, implying that we entertain more
than one disposition of mind.
This move resolves (or helps to resolve)
the dichotomy between mind and world,
personal-subjective experience and shared-objective
reality, which has given rise to the stale
ping-pong match of aesthetics, in which
the burden of meaning has been batted
back and forth between mind and world.
Consciousness1 (in Paskow’s terminology)
reflects our more private, dream-like
world where imagined objects are directly
and uncritically apprehended. Consciousness2
reflects our socially mediated world in
which, for example, we are able to verify
the contents of our dreams are fictional.
The co-presence of these two modes of
consciousness reflects the totality of
our experience in which we both believe
in and do not believe in imagined or fictional
worlds.
This, I believe, is a significant contribution,
not just to the debate about why art matters
to us but also to the wider question of
how we consciously inhabit the world.
The quest to understand consciousness
in scientific-philosophical terms has
generally held it to be a unitary phenomenon
in which diverse neural and cognitive
activities are drawn together into a singular
experience. Extrapolating from Paskow’s
argument, we might be permitted to theorise
about consciousness, not as a singular
whole, but as a compound of contradictory
and mutually incompatible states.
Whether or not conscious experience is
inherently contradictory or paradoxical
is a matter for further research and debate.
The claims made in The Paradoxes of
Art, however, seem to be part of an
emerging tendency across a number of discrete
disciplines to regard certain longstanding
metaphysical and epistemological questions
with fresh insight. Rather than arguing
the toss between two equally feasible
yet apparently contradictory positions–whether
aesthetic experience resides in the world
or the mind, for instance–there is
a growing recognition that a more productive
line of inquiry may be to accept the validity
of both, even with the contradiction (see
the review of Graham Priest’s Beyond
the Limits of Thought, Leonardo
Reviews, passim).
There are several other important components
of The Paradoxes of Art that would
require too much space to fully unpack.
But it is worth mentioning briefly the
way Paskow follows and builds on Heidegger’s
treatment of the individual object (or
work of art) not as a discrete and self-bounded
entity but as an integrated extension
or embodiment of all other things in the
world that relate to it. Thus, the work
of art matters because in it, as in all
objects, we perceive not only the isolated
object or person itself but the extended
web of our own existence:
"The experienced thing is thus a
microcosm, a sort of Leibnizian monad
which–darkly, uncannily–reflects
the current struggles of our being-in-the-world,
and the Significance of our lives."
(p. 104)
This metaphysical analysis is used to
support the claim that when we view a
work of art, we bypass the assumed Cartesian
split between art object and viewer, such
that the work and our experience of it
become indissolubly bonded:
". . . a currently and fully experienced
Vermeer painting becomes for me an important
aspect of the way I feel the world right
now, and it is an important dimension
of who I am right now." (p. 196)
I believe Paskow has told us, in philosophical
terms, something important about the way
we experience art, something we already
knew in a naïve way, and something
that for Chuck Jones was a professional
necessity: that the work of art is experienced
as being "out there", and not
in our heads; that what it depicts is
real and yet is also artificial; that
we "read in" our own experiences
such that the work becomes and extension
to and embodiment of us; and that we both
believe in the characters we become involved
in at the same time we are able to determine
they are not real.
The Paradoxes of Art is a complex,
and in some places technical, argument,
much of which will be of little interest
to those outside certain confined academic
cells. But the general import has much
wider significance, and is of particular
relevance given that the discourses of
art, philosophy, and consciousness are
rapidly converging, as evidenced by recent
books and conferences covered in this
journal.
