Here’s my suggestion: The struggle is actually the point. We don’t study art and have long conversations about it just in order to understand the art. It’s actually the other way around. We take on the task of trying to understand art so that we may have those delightful conversations and be propelled into those wonderful studies. We have shaped our practice of art appreciation for the joys of the process. We engage with art for the satisfactions of the struggle—for the pleasures of careful attention, interpretation, and evaluation. In this way, art appreciation is like a game. In a game, the goals and restrictions shape the gaming activity, fine-tuning it into just the kind of struggle we wish to be absorbed in.
And thinking of art appreciation as a kind of game will help us to understand some of the oddly Byzantine ‘rules’ of art appreciation. It will help us resolve a long-running debate about the value of independent judgement in art appreciation. Consider: There are two norms of art appreciation that seem deeply in tension. On the one hand, we seem to care about making correct judgements. We want our beliefs and judgements to match the fine details of the artworks. On the other hand, we seem to also value a radical independence of mind. We are supposed to judge the Van Gogh for ourselves, to experience its strange twisting bubbling life for ourselves. We are supposed to decide for ourselves whether Kanye’s new album is a tragic overreach, a misunderstood masterpiece, or a lazy sell-out. We seem to think that an we should not declare that an artwork is beautiful or failed, based simply on the testimony of another. We are supposed to judge art for ourselves.
But these two demands seem deeply at odds. Elsewhere in intellectual life, our interest in correctness usually trumps the demand for independence. When we want to get it right, we usually defer to experts. I defer to my doctor about what medicines to take; I defer to my mechanic about which repairs my car needs. Even the scientific experts need to depend on thousands of other experts. So: if we really care about getting things right with art, shouldn’t we also defer to experts there, too? After all, Beethoven may give me all kinds of rich, shimmering feelings and responses, but I know so little of the music theory that is apparently required to understand much of what Beethoven is doing. If I wanted to have the right judgements about Beethoven, shouldn’t I just defer to some classical music expert? But such deference seems to miss something crucial about the whole activity of art appreciation. Here’s one traditional explanation: such deferences misses the essential subjectivity of aesthetic judgement. It would be absurd defer to others in our aesthetic judgements, if those judgements were just expressions of our own subjective responses.
I wish, here, to offer a very different explanation. It could very well be that some aesthetic judgements are objective. But the reason we pursue those right answers are different with art appreciation than with many other objective domains. In science, we care about actually getting the right answers. But with art appreciation, we care most about engaging in the activity of trying to get it right—about going through the whole process of looking and searching and imagining and interpreting. This is why we don’t defer to experts. Correct judgements are the goal, but not the purpose, of art appreciation. The value of art appreciation lies in the activity of trying to get correct judgements, rather than actually having made correct judgements.
The games analogy is quite useful here. With a puzzle game, we don’t just look up the answers online. We avoid deferring to the experts who have already solved the puzzles. But the reason we don’t defer to experts here is not because the solutions are subjective. For many puzzles, there is, indeed, a single objectively correct solution. And if the whole point of the exercise was simply to have the correct solution, then we should proceed to that solution by the most efficient means possible, which often will be looking it up online. But often we don’t just look it up online, because the whole point of the activity is to try and figure it out for ourselves.
To understand this point better, we need to distinguish between goals and purposes. The local goal of an activity is what you aim at and pursue during the activity. The purpose of an activity is your reason for taking it up in the first place; it is the real value you find in the activity. For some players, goal and purpose can be identical, or close to it: like the Olympic athlete trying to win because they really just want to win; or the professional poker player trying to win because they want the money that follows from winning. But for many other players, goal and purpose sharply diverge. A lot of the time, my purpose in going rock climbing is to relax and shut up the endless, nattering voice in my head. But in order to relax, I have to throw myself into the local goal of getting to the top of the rock. I need local dedication in order to fully absorb myself in the climb—and that absorption is exactly what I need to clear my head. But in the larger scheme of things, I don’t really care if I get to the top. If I spend the day failing and failing, but go home mentally and spiritually refreshed, then it is a day well spent.
There are, then, two very different motivational structures that can be involved with playing games. First, one could be engaged in ‘achievement play’—playing a game for the value of winning itself (or something that follows from the win, like money). Second, one could be engaged in ‘striving play’—playing a game for the value of the struggle (or something that follows from that struggle, like fitness or relaxation). Notice that, for a striving player to have that desirable struggle, they have to actually try to win. But winning isn’t the point for them; playing is.
by C. Thi Nguyen, Forum For Philosophy | Read more:
Image: Katrien Vanderlinden
