The Arts of the Beautiful by Etienne Gilson
Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2010 2:57 am
Today I finished reading The Arts of the Beautiful by Etienne Gilson.
The product description is accurate:
"Product Description
With his usual lucidity, Etienne Gilson addresses the idea that "art is the making of beauty for beauty's sake." By distinguishing between aesthetics, which promotes art as a form of knowledge, and philosophy, which focuses on the presence of the artist's own talent or genius, Gilson maintains that art belongs to a different category entirely, the category of "making." Gilson's intellectually stimulating meditation on the relation of beauty and art is indispensible to philosophers and artists alike."
http://www.amazon.com/Arts-Beautiful-Et ... 836&sr=1-1
In the introduction (p. 9), Gilson states his controversial contention which he expands upon in many contexts in the book:
"In the Encyclopedie francaise we find this quotation by the historian Lucien Febvre: "Assuredly, art is a kind of knowledge."1 The present book rests upon the firm and considered conviction that art is not a kind of knowledge or, in other words, that it is not a manner of knowing. On the contrary, art belongs in an order other than that of knowledge, namely, in the order of making or, as they say, in that of "factivity." From beginning to end, art is bent upon making; this book says nothing else."
The final paragraph of the book is a beautiful summation:
"Art creates beauty. The beautiful is a transcendental of being, and to approach being as such is always to reach the threshhold of the sacred. In this sense, all pure art, and all the pure arts as such, are related to the religious sphere in the same way as are the other great human activities, such as science, philosophy and ethics. The pure true, sought and embraced for its own sake only; the pure good, willed as unconditionally desirable, because it is good; unity and order pursued and observed in all domains for their own sake - these are, so to speak, so many ontological modalities. The beautiful is another one. It is the most modest of all those modalities of being, since it is merely the good of sensible apperception of being, when there is conformity between the object of sense and the sensibility of an intelligible subject. Such is the kind of beauty the fine arts are about. It is merely that. The "beautiful" is neither the "true" nor the "good," it can substitute for neither one, but both need it in order to win access to the hearts of men. So also, religion mobilizes all the arts to press them into the service of the deity. Only, they themselves are not religion, and they first have to be art in order to serve any conceivable cause. And art should be at its best when the cause to be served is religion."
Comments anyone?
The product description is accurate:
"Product Description
With his usual lucidity, Etienne Gilson addresses the idea that "art is the making of beauty for beauty's sake." By distinguishing between aesthetics, which promotes art as a form of knowledge, and philosophy, which focuses on the presence of the artist's own talent or genius, Gilson maintains that art belongs to a different category entirely, the category of "making." Gilson's intellectually stimulating meditation on the relation of beauty and art is indispensible to philosophers and artists alike."
http://www.amazon.com/Arts-Beautiful-Et ... 836&sr=1-1
In the introduction (p. 9), Gilson states his controversial contention which he expands upon in many contexts in the book:
"In the Encyclopedie francaise we find this quotation by the historian Lucien Febvre: "Assuredly, art is a kind of knowledge."1 The present book rests upon the firm and considered conviction that art is not a kind of knowledge or, in other words, that it is not a manner of knowing. On the contrary, art belongs in an order other than that of knowledge, namely, in the order of making or, as they say, in that of "factivity." From beginning to end, art is bent upon making; this book says nothing else."
The final paragraph of the book is a beautiful summation:
"Art creates beauty. The beautiful is a transcendental of being, and to approach being as such is always to reach the threshhold of the sacred. In this sense, all pure art, and all the pure arts as such, are related to the religious sphere in the same way as are the other great human activities, such as science, philosophy and ethics. The pure true, sought and embraced for its own sake only; the pure good, willed as unconditionally desirable, because it is good; unity and order pursued and observed in all domains for their own sake - these are, so to speak, so many ontological modalities. The beautiful is another one. It is the most modest of all those modalities of being, since it is merely the good of sensible apperception of being, when there is conformity between the object of sense and the sensibility of an intelligible subject. Such is the kind of beauty the fine arts are about. It is merely that. The "beautiful" is neither the "true" nor the "good," it can substitute for neither one, but both need it in order to win access to the hearts of men. So also, religion mobilizes all the arts to press them into the service of the deity. Only, they themselves are not religion, and they first have to be art in order to serve any conceivable cause. And art should be at its best when the cause to be served is religion."
Comments anyone?