Book Reviews
KIVY, PETER.
The Possessor and the Possessed: Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, and the Idea of Musical
Genius. Yale University Press, 2001, xiv + 287 pp.,
9 b&w illus., $35.00 cloth.
Peter Kivy is a philosophical raconteur. As well as
analyses and arguments, his books contain narratives
that aim to create a unifying framework. Because he
writes elegantly and intelligently, Kivy’s stories are
always engaging and interesting. The Possessor and
the Possessed is no exception.
The book is in two parts. On my view, it would have
been better had they been inverted. In the second, Kivy
provides an account of the genius composer: he or
she is disposed to create works of the highest caliber.
This requires a musically fecund imagination and the
talent, concentration, and motivation to get the most
of the musical ideas he or she comes up with. One
theory of genius, deriving from Plato, provides
a metaphor for the role of the creative imagination: the
genius is possessed by the muses and is a passive
conduit for the transmission of their ideas. A second
theory, dating from a first-century book on the sublime, misattributed to Longinus, emphasizes instead
the centrality of the genius’s talent. The genius is
a naturally gifted individual who is active and in
control of what he or she creates. According to Kivy,
the first view is needed to account for “one off”
masterpieces; cases in which an artist produces a single
tour de force for which there is no precedent in their
oeuvre. The second is required to accommodate those
singular individuals, such as Beethoven, who repeatedly and consistently produce masterworks.
As this makes clear, Kivy regards the concept of
genius as possessing content and explanatory power.
He resists attempts to deconstruct or dismiss it. It is
not reducible merely to a socially fabricated reputation, as has been argued by Tia DeNora. (Kivy’s pen
must have slipped when he wrote, “For what is
important to us is . . . what was taken for truth by those
who were in the process of constructing the concept
of musical genius” [p. 38].) Also, because women are
no less capable than men of genius when given the
same opportunities, the absence of women from the
canon shows the extent to which they have been
discriminated against, not that the notion of genius
should be dismissed as a tool of masculinist bias,
as has been recommended by Christine Battersby.
Meanwhile, psychoanalytic explanations cannot
account for the rarity of genius, because they deal
with widely shared experiences, and the portrayal of
Mozart in Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, by implying that
the genius need never labor, study, or practice in perfecting his art, so that genius might be one hundred
percent inspiration and zero percent perspiration,
represents an unrealizable extreme.
I found much to enjoy in these later chapters, but it
is in the first part of the book that Kivy sets up and
develops his narrative. According to it, there has been
an alternation over time between the two models of
genius outlined above. Handel was a genius in the
Longinian mold. Mozart’s genius was characterized
by the Platonic view. With Beethoven, the Longinian
model again became dominant and remained so for
more than one hundred years. Only under the influence of Shaffer’s recent portrayal of Mozart has the
Platonic picture of genius reasserted itself. Although
there were geniuses before Handel, Handel was the
first composer who could be recognized by his
contemporaries as such, because it was only in the
eighteenth century that the composer qualified as an
artist (as opposed to a mere craftsperson) and that
philosophers developed the theory of artistic genius.
Indeed, it is part of Kivy’s thesis that philosophical
developments played a key role in each swing of the
pendulum between the two conceptions of genius.
Addison, Burke, and Young laid the philosophical
ground for Handel’s elevation to the status of genius.
They built on the Longinian model, by variously
emphasizing the importance of natural talent and
originality, by associating genius with the sublime,
and by suggesting not only that geniuses break the
rules but also that this is a virtue and not a fault in
what they produce. In his 1760 biography of Handel,
Mainwaring describes the composer in a fashion that
accords with this picture. For instance, he interprets
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 61:1 Winter 2003
74
the musical ability displayed by Handel in his
childhood as evidence of his natural talent, and he
intimates that what some regarded as defects in the
music are in fact strengths.
Schopenhauer favors the Platonic view of genius. To
the idea that genius is associated with madness, loss of
ego, and the appearance of possession (as a result of the
absence of “common sense,” not godly visitation), he
adds the image of the genius as perpetual child, citing
Mozart as an example. Mozart’s early biographers,
such as Niemetschek (1798), stress the achievements
of his childhood years and describe the adult as game
loving, naively affectionate, impractical, and distracted.
When Schopenhauer argued for the elevation of music
above all the arts and set out his account of genius
(1819), Mozart was the inevitable paradigm.
The account of genius provided by Kant in his
Critique of Judgment (1790) is Longinian, except
that he connects it to the creation of the beautiful
rather than the sublime. Kant’s major contribution to
this view was an argument to show that genius cannot
be constrained by rules: since the beautiful is without
concept, the production of beauty is not susceptible
to methodization, so the producer must be original.
The genius, he says, gives the rule to art; that is, it is
only after the fact of creation that scholars can derive
from masterpieces rules or principles that then
can become guides for lesser artists. Meanwhile,
Beethoven is described by his contemporaries as
oblivious to his surroundings, as heroic, and as a
political and social rebel. It is the account they offer
of the music—as grand, sublime, and terrifying—that
reveals these personal traits as illustrating the
Longinian view. Above all, Beethoven is identified
as someone who must overturn musical conventions.
Kivy repeatedly insists that he is interested in the
myth, not facts, and he uses as evidence for the predominance of one or the other model some accounts
known to be false of the composers they purport to
describe. That may be acceptable, given his purposes.
But there are two kinds of facts he cannot afford to
ignore, and I have reservations for both as regards his
discussion of Mozart.
In the first instance, Kivy must be correct in his
description of the contemporary view as inclining to
one or other theory of genius. As he frequently
acknowledges in the discussion of Beethoven and subsequently, many descriptions of behavior could be
consistent with either model. Childhood skill is as
likely to be evidence of natural talent as of divine
inspiration; distractedness in ordinary conduct is as
liable to indicate intense concentration on other,
musical matters as to show the madness of possession.
It seems to me that much of what is cited by Kivy
from Mozart’s contemporaries is neutral between the
Longinian and Platonic views and that Kivy exaggerates the extent to which Mozart the composer was seen
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
as “a perpetual child.” Moreover, just as Beethoven
was described by some of his contemporaries as possessed by divine inspiration, Mozart was described
also as possessing prodigious natural talent and as
authoring powerful, grand music.
Second, Kivy must respect the facts of musical
genius as such, since he argues for the concept’s reality. And recall that it is their genius as composers, not
performers, in terms of which Kivy is supposed to discuss Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven. My view is that
Mozart did not begin producing masterpieces of the
highest caliber until adulthood, and he did not do so
consistently before the age of twenty-five, with works
(in the K. 360s) such as Idomeneo and the Sinfonia
Concertante for Violin and Viola. Had he died at
twenty, he would have been rated, qua composer, as a
largely unfulfilled genius. Mozart’s contemporaries
(and Kivy) focus more on the child who was a prodigy
as a performer. Where composition is mentioned in
this connection, it is not because the childhood works
are masterpieces but because it is extraordinary that
anyone could write music of such technical competence—that is, in accord with the rules—at such an
early age. No one who concentrates on Mozart as a
composer is likely to see him as childlike or as displaying more effortless facility than other composers
of the time. Those of his contemporaries who knew
how he worked did not. Recall Kivy’s claim that the
Platonic model of genius best fits the composer who
seems to transcend the limits of their own basic talent
by producing a single masterpiece. That composer,
obviously, is not Mozart. Kivy allows that Haydn and
Bach do not clearly fit either of his models of genius. It
seems to me the same is true of Mozart.
I think Kivy’s two models of genius are complementary, not competing. The Platonic view addresses the
fact that geniuses get wonderful ideas seemingly from
thin air and the Longinian model explains that they need
to shape, explore, and develop those ideas in producing
an artwork of quality. A composer who comes up with
only banal ideas will not write a masterpiece and neither
will one who is unable to tame, make the most of, and
satisfactorily integrate the good ideas she has. Kivy’s
models stress the two different aspects of creation where
both are essential to the composition of masterworks.
STEPHEN DAVIES
Department of Philosophy
University of Auckland
PILLOW, KIRK.
Sublime Understanding: Aesthetic
Reflection in Kant and Hegel. MIT Press, 2000,
vi + 377 pp., $37.95 cloth.
Kirk Pillow’s Sublime Understanding: Aesthetic Reflection in Kant and Hegel accentuates Kant’s aesthetics of
Book Reviews
sublimity for the purposes of developing a wellknown insight into the nature of interpretation,
namely, that it tends to be open-ended and nonrigidlystructured. The book’s originality resides in its use
of Kant’s aesthetic judgments of the sublime as
a model for interpretation in general. With this innovative extrapolation, Pillow shows how Kant’s theory
of the sublime can fit in well with contemporary
hermeneutics and postmodern sensibilities. Overall,
the study is coherently organized and consistently
well-written, moving from Kant’s aesthetics, to
Hegel’s aesthetics, and finally to contemporary theories of metaphor and interpretation. The enjoyable
book is grounded upon a controversial and disadvantageous assumption, though, which I will articulate
and criticize below.
The first section of Sublime Understanding focuses
upon Kant’s theory of reflective judgment with a
view toward highlighting the nature of judgments of
the sublime. Here, the particular formulation of
Kant’s distinction between “reflective” [reflectirend]
and “determinative” [bestimmend] judgment is foundational. According to Pillow, reflective judgment
“seeks out a purposive unity—the appearance of
intentional organization—among the diversity of
presentations, or features of objects or situations,
upon which it reflects” (p. 18). In contrast, determinative judgment arises when “a concept or
universal . . . is available to judgment, and judgment
need only subsume a particular under it” (p. 19). For
Kant, when one judges reflectively, one starts with an
individual and seeks a concept in terms of which the
individual can be understood, and when one judges
determinately, one starts with a concept and seeks an
individual to which the concept can be applied. Kant
famously claims that all aesthetic judgments are
reflective and, thus, are fundamentally searching.
Pillow emphasizes that in reflective aesthetic judgment the “search for purposive unity among a diversity
of parts” (p. 31)—a search that, most importantly, has
no determinate conclusion in cases of beauty and sublimity—is the key to understanding the significance of
judgments of sublimity as they bear on interpretation
in general. For when we likewise interpret a work of
art, there is (as many have argued) a search for meaning accompanied by an inexhaustibility and endlessness to the enterprise. Later in the book, Pillow cites
Stephen David Ross’s theory of interpretation as
“inexhaustibility by contrast” and Nelson Goodman’s
“ways of worldmaking” to illustrate the hermeneutic
vision he has in mind.
Within this context, Pillow makes inventive and
highly perceptive use of Kant. His interpretation
becomes extreme when he distinguishes rigidly
between the form-focused (formalist) and meaningfocused (interpretive) aesthetic spheres, and associates Kant’s theory of beauty exclusively with the
75
former, Kant’s theory of sublimity exclusively with
the latter. Supposedly, Kantian beauty is only about
formal unity of an indeterminate sort, and Kantian
sublimity is only about semantic unity of an indeterminate sort. With this separation of the waters, Pillow
offers an “alternative solution to the long-standing
debate in the literature concerning the respective
roles of ‘form’ and ‘expression’ in Kant’s aesthetics”
(p. 88). His solution is an eye-opener, given how
often Kant refers to beauty (and not sublimity) in
connection with meaning-exuding “aesthetic ideas”
in the later sections of the Critique of Judgment. Kant
states, “We may describe beauty in general (whether
natural or artificial) as the expression of aesthetic
ideas” (Critique of Judgment, §51). He also claims
that aesthetic ideas enliven (beleben) the cognitive
faculties (Critique of Judgment, §49).
Pillow notes Kant’s claim that beauty is the
expression of aesthetic ideas, but he chooses radically to reconstruct Kant’s view in a way that disintegrates the intriguing fusion (or remove the confusion)
of beauty and sublimity that pervades Kant’s characterization of aesthetic ideas. Pillow consequently
associates aesthetic ideas exclusively with sublimity.
With this, he grounds upon Kant’s theory of aesthetic
ideas an account of what he calls “sublime understanding.” This is a kind of indeterminate “understanding” (i.e., it is not “understanding” in Kant’s
technical sense) that remains illuminating, just as
an effective and ingenious metaphorical coinage is
illuminating. Aesthetic ideas are associated with
metaphor, and via the concept of metaphor, Pillow
links Kant’s theory of aesthetic ideas with those
contemporary theories of interpretation that emphasize metaphorical thought. These connections are apt
and well traced in the third part of the book.
The intermediary section of Sublime Understanding focuses on Hegel’s discussion of imaginative
styles (viz., Einbildungskraft and Phantasie), and on
his triad of “symbolic,” “classic,” and “romantic” art.
The classical-art center of Hegel’s aesthetics is
mostly bypassed, however, because the expository
goal is to emphasize how the symbolic and romantic
forms of art illustrate the account of reflective judgments of the sublime to be found in Kant. The
purpose of introducing Hegel is to add detail to the
structure of the Kantian aesthetic ideas. Hegel is useful here, for during the course of his encyclopedic
hierarchicalization and systematization of almost
everything significant that he can identify, Hegel
mentions various styles of imagination and association that can be used to help specify how our “webs
of meaning” are structured.
As a pendant to the discussion of Hegel, a brief
survey of some antecedent British empiricist
associationist thinkers reveals how imagination and wit
play a crucial role in constructing our interpretations.
76
This discussion, along with that of Hegel’s views on
imagination, is positively contributory as a matter of
scholarship because it opens up an area that tends to
be neglected in most accounts of Hegel’s aesthetics,
namely, Hegel’s views on the mental processes
involved in artistic creation. Just as one can refer to
Hegel’s Logic as a way to understand Hegel’s theory
of aesthetic judgment, Pillow helpfully directs us
to Hegel’s Encyclopedia as a way to understand
Hegel’s rarely thematized theory of artistic creativity.
At various points throughout the book, aesthetic
ideas are described as “shared webs of meaning,” as
“networked meanings,” as “shared connectivity,” as
“world-making webs of meaning,” as “meaninggiving webs of relation-building,” as “indeterminate
webs of shared meaning,” as “sense-making network[s],” as “localized patterns of intelligibility,” as
“fields of shared connection,” as “relational affinities,” as “shared field[s] of social meanings,” as “network[s] of affinities,” as “web[s] of interrelation,” as
“networks of indeterminate unity,” as “visions of
intelligibility,” and as “’unifying’ set[s] of relations.”
The array of locutions is impressionistically impressive, but they largely remain as uniformly indeterminate as the phrase “unity amidst diversity.” In any
case, these “webs” are strictly opposed to systems of
classification of a determinate sort, as one might find in
a system of biological taxonomy. This is the basic contrast Pillow wishes to draw—he distinguishes between
determinate and indeterminate structures of meaning—
and his book valuably emphasizes how indeterminate
and open-ended meaning-formation plays a role in our
conscious life and being in the world.
With respect to the scholarly interpretation of
Kant, Pillow identifies “determinative” judgment
(viz., when one starts with a concept and seeks
an object to which it can be applied) with “logical”
(or “cognitive”) judgment (viz., when a determinate
concept and an individual are brought together to
judge “S is P”), and collapses the two kinds of judgment into one. Taxonomically, it can nonetheless be
argued that the generic distinction is between determinative and reflective judgment, and that the more
specific distinction is between logical and aesthetic
judgment, because Kant’s definitions of reflective
judgment comprehensively include those cases where
an individual is given and a concept is sought and not
found (reflective aesthetic judgment), and those cases
where an individual is given and a concept is sought
and found (reflective logical judgment).
Pillow’s identification of “determinative” and
“logical” judgment is based on a subtle assumption
regarding the phenomenology of logical awareness,
which is that whenever “subsumption” of an individual under a determinate concept occurs, the concept
must first be thought about before the individual to
which it applies is thought about. Every judgment
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
involving “subsumption” is thus considered to be
determinative (pp. 25, 31). But Kant says that in
certain cases, “reflective judgment must subsume
[subsumiren] under a law which is not yet given”
[Kant’s italics in original] (Critique of Judgment,
§69). He also states that reflective judgment “makes
concepts possible” and that concepts “result” (or are
“attained,” or “reached,” or are “gained” [erlangen]) by
it (First Introduction to the Critique of Judgment, §5).
If we accept these statements, then reflective judgment
can include among its processes determinate concept
formation in addition to subsumption under determinate
concepts. The mere presence of a determinate concept in a judgment does not render the judgment
“determinative,” in other words.
This is not a point of technical insignificance,
because Pillow’s nonacknowledgement of reflective
logical judgment leads him to deemphasize most of the
discussions in Kant’s aesthetics that involve the association of beauty with determinately meaningful content,
such as Kant’s account of dependent beauty and his
account of the ideal of beauty. In other words, the
book’s one-sided definition of reflective judgment
generates a historically misleading submergence of the
neoclassical content in the presentations of both Kant’s
and Hegel’s aesthetics in order to elevate postmodern
indeterminacy of meaning. Moreover, owing to the
markdown of logical judgment, the hermeneutical role
of reflective judgment is reduced to the single-minded
enterprise of constructing “webs of meaning” that lack
an overridingly determinate structure. There is, admittedly, an open-endedness in the meaning-constructs
involved in interpretation, but reflective judgment, as
reflective logical judgment, helps to construct determinate concepts that can provide a strong measure of
stability to interpretations. This, too, is part of our
“making sense” of works of art and our general activity
of world-making. Pillow’s own quote from Nelson
Goodman confirms this important role of reflective
logical judgment. As can be readily seen, Goodman’s
words carry a definitively taxonomic and logical air that
is foreign to the hermeneutics of sublime understanding:
Much but by no means all worldmaking consists of taking
apart and putting together, often conjointedly: on the one
hand, of dividing wholes into parts and partitioning kinds
into subspecies, analyzing complexes into component features, drawing distinctions; on the other hand, of composing
wholes and kinds out of parts and members and subclasses,
combining features into subclasses, and making connections. (pp. 305–306)
Sublime Understanding: Aesthetic Reflection in Kant
and Hegel is in many ways a fine book. The intellectually fruitful emphasis upon judgments of the sublime
might have been grounded, though, upon a wider
characterization of reflective judgment. Had this
Book Reviews
been done, it might not have been necessary to set
aside the distinctive neoclassical features of Kant’s
and Hegel’s aesthetics proper. Also, a more complicated and realistic account of reflective thought
processes as they operate in interpretation—an
account that includes both aesthetic and logical forms
of judgment and that does not so easily and fashionably grant hermeneutical hegemony to metaphorical
thought—might have been consequently articulated.
ROBERT WICKS
Department of Philosophy
The University of Auckland
IRWIN, WILLIAM.
Intentionalist Interpretation: A
Philosophical Explanation and Defense. Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press, 1999, 152 pp., $62.95 cloth.
The intentionalist view of interpretation holds that
the proper aim of a text’s interpreter is to discover the
meaning its author intended, since a text just means
what its author meant by it. Examples such as malapropism, where the text seems to mean something
other than what the speaker meant, have made strict
intentionalism unattractive; even E. D. Hirsch Jr.,
among the most steadfast intentionalists, came to
hold that linguistic convention plays an independent
role in fixing textual meaning. But with Intentionalist
Interpretation, William Irwin aims to show why
Hirsch was wrong to abandon strict intentionalism
and offer a supplement to restore its viability. On my
view, Irwin’s defense of intentionalism is unsuccessful, but this book remains a useful philosophical
resource.
Written in a clear and engaging style, the text
unites several discussions relevant to its thesis:
The distinction between normative and descriptive
approaches to interpretation (Chapter 1); Michel
Foucault’s and Roland Barthes’s rejection of the
author, and Jorge Gracia’s and Alexander Nehamas’s
proposals to redeem author-based interpretation
(Chapter 2); the debate over intentionalism between
Hirsch and Monroe Beardsley (Chapter 3, where
Irwin defends his own view); Hans-Georg Gadamer’s
views regarding the hermeneutic circle and the
fusion of horizons (Chapter 4); and contemporary
approaches to legal interpretation (Chapter 5, where
Irwin argues that intentionalism is appropriate to all
kinds of texts). Most of these topics are treated rather
briefly, but the book provides a helpful survey of the
relevant terrain. Irwin’s recent anthology, The Death
and Resurrection of the Author? (Greenwood Press,
2002), collects many of the relevant texts and might
serve as a companion to the present volume.
I will focus on Irwin’s defense of his own view,
urinterpretation, an extension of Hirsch’s intentional-
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ism. Hirsch originally held that “meaning is an affair
of consciousness and not of physical signs or things”
(Validity in Interpretation, Yale University Press,
1969, p. 23) and, thus, denied that texts, in themselves, could bear meaning. The question, then, was
whose consciousness determines a text’s meaning:
the reader’s or the author’s? Hirsch chose the latter,
for reasons to be discussed below. Eventually, he softened his stance to allow that linguistic conventions
limit the meanings an author can intend.
Irwin differs from Hirsch in two important
respects: he resists Hirsch’s concession that convention restricts textual meaning, and he introduces an
author construct, the urauthor, as an interpretative
tool. Irwin is a strict intentionalist, since he holds that
a text’s meaning is determined exclusively by its
author’s intentions. “Meaning is . . . in the mind”
(p. 57), and an author is free to intend any meaning
whatever for a given text. Even if her meaning is
unlikely to be conveyed successfully, the text means
just what she means by it (pp. 57–58).
Irwin’s defense of strict intentionalism stems from
two Hirschian arguments. First, the interpreter’s ethical
duty is to seek out the author’s intended meaning: to
do otherwise is to use the text “merely as grist for
one’s own mill” (Hirsch, The Aims of Interpretation,
University of Chicago Press, 1976, p. 91) and, thus,
treat the author as a means only, in the Kantian sense.
The categorical imperative applies to texts, Hirsch
says, “because speech is an extension and expression
of men in the social domain” (Aims, p. 90).
Perhaps Hirsch has more to say on the subject, but
Irwin fails to show that Kant’s imperative leads to
intentionalism. We sometimes punish an agent for
effects produced as a result of her action, though
contrary to her intention. Do we then fail to treat her
as an end in herself? No: to hold someone responsible
for effects foreseeable to, but not intended (and
perhaps not foreseen) by, her is to take her seriously
as a rational agent capable of evaluating courses of
action and choosing appropriately. Why, then, should
an interpreter consider only the meaning an author
intended, rather than also, or instead, the meanings
she should have expected her audience to understand
from her text? Interpretation based on reasonable
audience expectations may, in fact, conduce to seeing
her as an end in herself, since it treats her as a rational
communicator.
The second argument for strict intentionalism is
based on the view that a text cannot “speak for itself”
(p. 47); to interpret, we must make certain defeasible
assumptions about the author, such as that she is
rational and uses language conventionally (p. 32).
When these assumptions prove false, Irwin suggests,
this shows “how reliant upon the author we actually
are” (p. 32) and demonstrates that appeal to actual
intentions is required.
78
But in Irwin’s own examples, the data we use to
overturn such assumptions often seem to be found
within the text. As an instance of unconventional
word usage that requires intentionalist interpretation,
Irwin offers E. E. Cummings’s concrete poem r-p-op-h-e-s-s-a-g-r, which ends:
.gRrEaPsPhOs)
to
rea(be)rran(com)gi(e)ngly
,grasshopper;
Irwin asserts that “the words mean what the author
intended to communicate by them” (p. 57), even if the
usage is unconventional. Tellingly, though, Irwin offers
no explanation of what Cummings meant. The text is
presented on its own, without appeal to the poet’s
intentions. Other examples receive similar treatment.
There is nothing distinctively intentionalist in Irwin’s
approach to this case: as he acknowledges elsewhere,
the anti-intentionalist can appeal to authorial intention
“as long as it is inferred from the text itself” (p. 34).
In a way, Irwin is right that interpreting Cummings’s poem requires looking beyond the text.
We must appeal to facts about linguistic context and
convention: the fact that “rea(be)rran(com)gi(e)ngly”
is not a word, but “rearranging” and “become” are
words; the fact that “gRrEaPsPhOs,” rearranged,
becomes “grasshopper”; and facts about the conventional meanings of “rearranging,” “become,” “grasshopper,” and the suffix “-ly.” Irwin regards his
approach as intentionalist because these facts are
included in his author construct, the urauthor, which is
“composed of relevant available biographical information, likely intentions, use of language in the text itself,
information concerning the author’s context and
audience, and other texts of the same author” (p. 61).
The urauthor is required, Irwin points out, because
of problems with the author’s availability: “We can
never even hope to ‘have’ the real historical author.
All we ever have is a more or less accurate version of
him as related to his text” (p. 29). If I understand
Irwin correctly, the urauthor is a tool to maximize our
probability of ascertaining the author’s intentions
(which, as mental states, are in principle inaccessible
[pp. 49–50]), though we will never be sure we have
succeeded in a given case. The information included
in the urauthor seems likely to lead us toward the
author’s intention.
This does not mean, however, that all appeals to
such information are intentionalist. Linguistic convention may be used to ascertain authorial intentions;
but it might be used, instead, to fix textual meaning
independent of the author’s mental states. When
I appeal to the conventional meaning of “grasshopper,” I fix an aspect of the poem’s meaning: it is
about grasshoppers and not, say, woodchucks. Irwin
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
would have us believe that whether “grasshopper”
means “woodchuck” in Cummings’s poem depends
entirely on some private mental state experienced by
Cummings as he wrote the poem. If Cummings had
woodchucks in mind—if, knowingly or unknowingly,
he used “grasshopper” unconventionally to refer to
woodchucks—then, on Irwin’s view, his poem is
about woodchucks.
Unlike Irwin, I hold the anti-intentionalist intuition
that the text is not about woodchucks, even if Cummings knowingly used “grasshopper” to refer to woodchucks. (Had he given us some intratextual clues to his
unconventional usage, that might be another matter.)
But my point is not about intuitions. I mean only to
show that linguistic convention need not be used to
ascertain private authorial intentions. It may be used,
instead, to determine textual meaning independently—
and perhaps in contravention—of the author’s intention. If linguistic convention can do what Irwin needs
it to do, namely, supply evidence of authorial intent, it
can also do what the anti-intentionalist needs it to do:
make texts into bearers of meaning.
The same goes for the urauthor’s other features,
including biography, information about audience, and
so on. Why not take Irwin’s method further and say
that these aspects of the urauthor fix textual meaning?
This might yield a hypothetical intentionalist view, on
which textual meaning is determined by the intentions
of a hypothetical author with the urauthor’s characteristics (including rationality, to the extent compatible with other features). The real author’s private,
epistemically inaccessible intentions would then be
irrelevant. I find in Intentionalist Interpretation no
compelling reason to accept that interpretation should
be a chase after the unknowable, so I remain unconvinced by Irwin’s case for strict intentionalism. But if
we read Irwin as a hypothetical intentionalist, his view
succeeds at fixing textual meaning, and thereby
secures its epistemic availability.
An editorial note: The book contains many
(usually minor) inaccuracies in direct quotations
from other authors, along with occasional failures to
note that a short passage is a direct quote (although
citations are provided).
SHERRI IRVIN
Departments of Philosophy
Princeton University and University of Ottawa
CARLSON, ALLEN.
Aesthetics and the Environment:
The Appreciation of Nature, Art, and Architecture.
New York: Routledge, 2000, xxi + 247 pp., 10 b&w
illus., $90.00 cloth, $15.99 paper.
This is unquestionably the most important book to have
appeared in the burgeoning field of environmental
Book Reviews
aesthetics. Carefully argued and clearly expressed,
broad in scope but patient with details, passionate
without being romantic, it is an elegant demonstration of what philosophical analysis can achieve in
regard to the appreciation of nature and its various
aesthetic qualities. It sets the bar very high for all
subsequent work in the field.
As its subtitle indicates, the book deals with more
than the aesthetics of nature. It also takes up a range
of subjects that might be regarded as artifactual
interventions in natural settings, such as works of
architecture, landscape art, and agriculture. Carlson’s
reflections on these latter topics are characteristically
insightful and informative, but clearly subsidiary to
the main thrust of the book, which is the development
and defense of what he calls the “natural environmental model” of the appreciation of nature, a species of what he more generally styles “the objectivist
approach.” This project takes up the first seven
chapters out of fourteen. Eleven of the chapters have
been previously published in journals or reference
works; three of them first appeared in this journal. Of
the three new chapters, two are designed chiefly to
serve as overviews of the six chapters to follow (one
introduces the theme of the appreciation of nature,
the other presents the framework for thinking about
a set of issues in which appreciation straddles the fence
between nature and art). The third new chapter analyzes relations between understanding and aesthetic
experience, addressing the questions of whether natural objects can be experienced aesthetically without
(much, if any) knowledge about them, and whether
knowledge, once had, can interfere with or even
destroy the aesthetic experience of nature.
Carlson’s objectivist natural aesthetics has been
debated and defended for two decades now, and
although there have been refinements and amendments from time to time, the general contours of his
approach have remained intact. Briefly stated, these
include the following ideas: (1) (With apologies to
Bishop Butler) nature is what it is and not another
thing; accordingly, any responsible form of appreciation of nature must take it for what it is rather than
some other thing (for example, something we see it
as a sign, reflection, or embodiment of); (2) Natural
objects are connected to their matrix environments in
“organic unity”; what they are is inseparable from the
conditions of their creation and development; (3) Just
as in the field of art, where certain aesthetic categories have been shown (most persuasively by Kendall
Walton) to be requisite to our making of informed
aesthetic judgments, so in the field of nature we need
categories to marshal our judgments and ensure that
what we appreciate is seen as what it really is and as
organically unified with its environment; (4) The correct categories of nature are those provided by the
natural sciences; (5) Thus, the appropriate aesthetic
79
appreciation of nature must proceed hand in hand
with scientific knowledge about the natural environment; (6) Because art is created, while nature is
discovered, “in science, unlike in art, creativity plays
its major role in the determinations of categories and
their correctness; and considerations of aesthetic
goodness come into play at this creative level” (p. 93);
(7) Thus, it follows analytically that the natural
environment has mainly positive aesthetic qualities,
a vindication of the view that “positive aesthetics”
holds in the world of nature.
These are bold and powerful ideas. Here, Carlson
makes an impressive case for them, patiently (and
repeatedly) working through both supportive arguments and challenges to his position. It is only now
that the various components of this position (which
appeared at various times and in various places) have
been assembled in a single volume, that the structure
and coherence of this position become apparent. If
you buy the basics—Carlson’s initial perspective on
the nature of nature and the enterprise of appreciation—everything that follows falls into place with
a sense of commonsensicality, even inevitability.
Readers of Plato and Kafka are familiar with this
effect, and with its residual worries. Everything goes
smoothly if you assume that there is a world of
forms, or if you assume that people are sometimes
transformed into cockroaches while they sleep. We
find a foothold from which to reject the denouement
only when we retrace our footsteps and reject these
initial assumptions.
Critical response to Carlson’s natural aesthetics
has usually taken the shape of an attack on one or
more of the seven key ideas mentioned above. But
the true thrust of much of the criticism is really
a rejection of certain assumptions that shape and animate the theory as a whole. “Nature” is a notoriously
ambiguous term, and Carlson’s deployment of it
follows one, but only one, perspective. Nature, as he
speaks of it, is not the dust mote tumbling down
across my study window, not the wen on my
mother’s cheek, not the grain on my old pipe. It is,
instead, the big outside. It is the buzzing, blooming,
sprawling environment in which all manner of things
grow, interact, and develop (largely) independent of
the hand of man. This way of thinking of nature has
the advantage of taking stock of any particular in the
context of its complex matrix of interdependency, the
interconnected web of natural process. But it sees it
only in that context; it is oblivious to any aspects of
the nonartifactual world not woven into that web.
Arguably, many objects and features of objects are
sufficiently detachable from the environmental
matrix that their aesthetic appreciation can be made
largely, if not wholly, independent of environmental
considerations. At least, so it seems to some other
aestheticians.
80
Equally subject to challenge is the assumption that
there is some brute, basic reality about nature, some
way of taking it that shows it to be what it “really is,”
and that this reality is made available to us by the
natural scientist. There are, of course, times when
aesthetic judgment is a matter of taking particular
things as specimens—good, bad, or indifferent—of
their categorial types. And here the categories of
science may be helpful, even indispensable. But,
equally, there are times when aesthetic attention
seems to cut across types, or abandon them altogether,
as when I see as beautiful a certain interplay of leaves
and clouds moving in a breeze. The fact that the
leaves are alder or oak, the clouds cumulus or cirrus,
has no bearing on the aesthetic experience; the fact
that these are trees and clouds may itself have only
the slightest bearing. For what the perceiver may be
responding to in this instance is an interplay of
rhythm, form, and color as divorced from the identities of its sources as the delight one may experience
in a Mahler symphony may be from the identity of
instruments that are performing it.
It would be a mistake, however, to take these
challenges to be winning points against the theory as
a whole. They merely point up different paths the
aesthetics of nature might take. Any alternative path
chosen will demand its own, confining assumptions
and encounter its own obstacles. In this book,
Carlson achieves something that simply had not been
done before. He begins with the groundwork and
builds upward until he has a full-scale philosophical
analysis of the enterprise of aesthetic appreciation as
it encompasses natural phenomena in their native
environment. If his assumptions are open to challenge, they are at least as respectable as most alternatives proposed; if the scope of his attention seems
restricted, it covers what it covers methodically and
perspicuously, without pretending to cover more. It
remains to his critics to do as much if they have
serious counterproposals.
Two themes in Part 2 deserve special attention.
The first is Carlson’s response to what he (admittedly
casually) calls the “postmodern approach to aesthetic
relevance,” the view that whatever observers happen
to bring to an object will be relevant to its aesthetic
appreciation. Carlson’s rejoinder to this approach
turns on shifting the conceptual focus from the
observer to the object of appreciation. Objects of
appreciation “make demands,” so that not just any
and everything that might be in the mind of the
observer can count toward its appreciation. Recognizing this fact, Carlson claims, holds significant
implications for applied aesthetics, making certain
historical, cultural, and artistic information necessary. He goes on, in the final chapters, to show how
this idea plays out in relation to roadsides, cornfields,
formal Japanese gardens, landscape in literature
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
(taking Tony Hillerman’s descriptions as a telling
example), various buildings, and even graffiti.
The second notable theme is Carlson’s response to
the claim that certain environmental works of art
(e.g., Smithson’s Asphalt Rundown and Heizer’s
Double Negative) are, because of the disruption to
prior natural conditions they bring about, affronts to
the natural environment. His answer to this challenge
flows directly from the categorial tenet (number 3,
above) in his general natural aesthetic: Whether a
given object is an affront or not is a function of the
determination of that object’s kind, and of whether
that kind has been changed. A change in kind would
result in an alteration of the object’s appreciable aesthetic qualities. On both of these themes, as well as
the other miscellaneous topics in the later chapters,
Carlson’s comments both illustrate the applicability
of his theory of aesthetic appreciation and provide a
sensible commentary on often-overlooked topics that
is informative whether or not you accept the theory.
In complimenting this book for its manifest
strengths, I do not mean to suggest that it is without
evident weaknesses. The arguments for requiring
contextual appreciation, for example, seem far more
plausible than the neo-Kantian claim that this form of
appreciation leads (through the lemma that science
creates categories of art in light of aesthetic goodness) to the conclusion that, within the scope of the
scientific worldview, the natural world is throughand-through aesthetically good. Whatever should
prove to be the basis of scientific category-making, it
is hard to see why that basis should ensure aesthetic
goodness in appreciations that deploy the categories.
Science gave us the category “cat,” but didn’t thereby
ensure that all cats are beautiful; and indeed you’d
have to be a Panglossian zealot to insist that no cat
is ugly. The new chapter on “Understanding and
Aesthetic Experience” has its problems, too. Here,
Carlson trains his analysis on Mark Twain’s famous
remark, in Life on the Mississippi, that once he had
mastered “the language of this water,” that is, gained
knowledge about it, the river lost for him its aesthetic
charm: “All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had
gone out of the majestic river!” The success of Carlson’s objectivism depends on the compatibility, at
some level, of cognitive and aesthetic experience; but
what Twain reports here seems to indicate a potential
rivalry between the two. Knowledge, he seems to be
saying, can get in the way of aesthetic appreciation.
Carlson’s way around this claim is first to show that
what Twain says does not actually commit him to the
incompatibility of aesthetic and cognitive elements in
his experience and, second, to show that reflection on
formalist theory reveals an incoherence in the incompatibility claim. But both of these responses are
suspect. Twain makes it clear that it was not only his
apointment to riverboat piloting (and all the attendant
Book Reviews
knowledge that required) that caused the change in
his perception. And the formalist theory, by restricting the range of aesthetic experience to form without
any eye to content, provides too easy a target. The
important question is not whether pure form is the
exclusive source of aesthetic experience but whether
some aesthetic experience can be so wedded to
perception that knowledge—categories, background
information, history—can impede that experience.
And that question just doesn’t get answered.
I could point to other apparent defects; but there
would be no point in doing so. All the criticisms
I might make are small potatoes. The book as a whole
is excellent, and will be mandatory reading for
anyone who takes a serious interest in the aesthetic
qualities of the natural environment.
A final note. Readers who persist in judging books
by their covers will, in this instance, make a big
mistake. The book’s cover illustration, a detail from
Tom Thomson’s Autumn Foliage (1916), is its worst
feature. Its colors (gray, black, and a sort of chartreuse) are arguably uglier in their combination than
anything to be found in nature. Its loose, messy
design gives no hint of the clarity and coherence of
the book’s contents. The illustration was printed
upside-down on the hardback edition; but this mistake
has been corrected in the paperback edition.
RONALD MOORE
Department of Philosophy
University of Washington
GROSZ, ELIZABETH.
Architecture from the Outside.
MIT Press, 2001, 218 pp., $20.00 paper.
LEATHERBARROW,
DAVID. Uncommon Ground:
Architecture, Technology, and Topography. MIT
Press, 2000, 297 pp., 87 b&w illus., $37.95 cloth.
Reading this pair of books together is a bracing
experience. One is written by an architectural authority with a decidedly philosophical turn of mind. The
other is written by a philosopher with interest in
issues that bear heavily on architecture. The play
between the two is most stimulating, moving the
reader from detailed analysis of the thinking of
particular architects and their buildings to broad theoretical issues that should be addressed in architectural
theory and practice. The big themes that both authors
address include a rethinking of space and the buildings that help articulate it; the role of time and praxis
in architecture; and the importance of undermining or
overcoming such traditional boundaries (in building
and thinking) as in/out and front/back. Having said
this, let me address Grosz’s work more specifically.
81
To begin, Grosz’s book is both much more than a
discussion of architecture and, unfortunately, a good
deal less. The use of the term “architecture” in the
title will seriously mislead readers thinking to be
taken on a sustained architectural investigation of
buildings or even space. Rather, Grosz reflects on
culture with emphasis on the body, spatiality, cyberspace, and other decidedly Continental issues. And
indeed, Grosz apologizes several times for stopping
short of what the title seems to promise. In the midst
of her insightful discussion of cyberspace and virtuality, she says, “Rather than explore technological
potential and its relevance to architectural practice—
something I am unfortunately unable to do—I hope
to see, more broadly and philosophically, how conceptions of virtuality, simulation, computer reproduction and rendering transform our understanding of the
real, matter, space, the body, and the world” (p. 76).
You get the idea. Grosz’s style and substance should
suit readers who like their philosophical ideas laid on
with broad brush strokes, preferably with a Gallic
palette.
But perhaps the book should be read as something
like a manifesto, a call to radical reappraisal of
culture from the standpoint of bodies in space. With
different expectations, Grosz’s thought is more a
refreshing provocation than a disappointing treatise
on architecture. Thus does she say, “These technologies [that make possible global computerization]
have served not to transform bodies . . . but to fundamentally transform the way that bodies are
conceived, their sphere of imaginary and lived
representation” (p. 51). Regrettably, Grosz does not
provide very specific analysis of how bodies have
been reconceived, except to dismiss allegedly phallocentric hopes that cyberspace will enable us to think
ourselves, and perhaps our (male) sexuality, as
disembodied (e.g., pp. 82–85). As Grosz remarks
(p. 61), she is primarily raising questions “inspired
by [Gilles] Deleuze”—who seems to have replaced
Derrida as the Continental philosopher du jour.
Where exactly does Grosz provoke most interestingly? I found her discussions of virtuality versus
virtual reality and lived spatiality more helpful than
some of the other chapters. In Chapter 2, “Lived
Spatiality,” Grosz does a good job of explaining how
the sense of “psychical integrity” depends upon a
developed body image that includes placing oneself
in space. She explores pathologies resulting from the
inability of people to anchor subjectivity in their bodies, for such anchoring “is the condition of a coherent
identity” (p. 37). Indeed, representing space as such
requires that individuals be able to locate themselves
as the physical/spatial point of origin. But this discussion is largely a reprise of the work of Roger Caillois.
Where Grosz makes original inroads is in moving
from this sense of embodiment to questions of virtual
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space and virtuality raised by computer-generated
cyberspace.
Grosz asks important questions about the relationship between the computer and virtual space and
architecture: Will computers change how buildings
are designed, how space is rethought, how we understand our connection to place or displacement? She
teases us with assertions such as the following without doing very much to explain or develop them:
“The virtuality of the space of computing, and of
inscription more generally, is transforming at least in
part how we understand what it is to be in space (and
time)” (p. 86). To give Grosz her due, she smoothly,
almost imperceptibly, glides from a discussion of the
“virtual” to the notion of “virtuality,” and then goes
on to speak at great length (and redundancy because
the essays were written separately and not revised for
the sake of streamlining or integration) about virtuality. And virtuality is about how the future infects the
present, about the indeterminate or open-endedness
of the future. She daringly, and I think correctly,
asserts that “the challenge that virtual reality poses to
architecture cannot be reduced to the question of
technology” (p. 87). This is because the challenge as
Grosz sees it is a matter of rethinking architecture in
terms of the rich notion of virtuality rather than the
more prosaic idea of virtual reality.
Grosz’s investigation of virtuality dovetails most
neatly with Leatherbarrow’s orientation when it links
the future with our potential for action in space,
emphasizing the “possibilities of my action on and
being acted on by matter in space and time” (Grosz,
p. 118). Space and the objects in it must be understood in terms of potential for bodily movement. We
will see how Leatherbarrow translates into concrete
architectural decisions and details Grosz’s claim that
once space is opened up to time, “space becomes
amenable to transformation and refiguring; it
becomes . . . individualized” (Grosz, p. 116). Leatherbarrow takes up Grosz’s challenge that we temporize
our conceptualization of space and architecture,
focusing on “relations of nearness and farness, relations of proximity and entwinement, . . . rather than of
numerals or geometry” (Grosz, p. 129).
The title of Leatherbarrow’s book, Uncommon
Ground, refers to the indeterminate areas overshadowed by the more prominent aspects of buildings,
what Grosz and Gilles Deleuze call the “in between”
(Grosz, p. 64). Leatherbarrow casually alludes to his
title when he notes the importance of the “gaps or
unclaimed areas, a discontinuous field, an uncommon
ground, a horizon no longer dominated by a constructed vista” (p. 19). Thus does he align his
repeated emphasis on horizontals (floors, ceilings,
shelves, terraces, benches, halls, paths, and the like)
with the notion of horizon. Horizon has several
meanings for Leatherbarrow, and he seems to want to
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
think them all at once: perceptual horizon where sky
meets land or sea; visible boundary of what we are
able to see from wherever we happen to be; horizon
as topographical field; horizon as practical context of
options for movement and acting; cultural/traditional
ways of doing things. What is common to the way
these horizons work and speak to architecture is that
they capture the “unnoticed underside” of what we
pay most attention to, such as the connections
between building and terrain. And this underside, full
of latency and tacit meaning, is akin to what Grosz
understands by virtuality. For it is full of potential,
and good building design works with it as a liberating
force. Leatherbarrow gives architectural definition to
Grosz’s notion that what matters most is “difference
and discontinuity” (Grosz, p. 115).
Leatherbarrow writes with a flair and dexterity that
is all the more remarkable for its grounding in the
details of buildings, sites, and materials. Here is a
schematic rendition of how Leatherbarrow contrasts
his approach to more typical architectural theory and
practice. The standard view emphasizes verticals
(walls and partitions): the front or facade of buildings;
hierarchical arrangements; pictorial effect; seeing
buildings as isolated, stable objects. Leatherbarrow’s
approach emphasizes horizontality: site sectionality;
accommodation to use and context; networks of
spaces; bodies in motion; intersection of praxis with
tradition and site.
Horizontality is Leatherbarrow’s conceptual
wedge into the web of relationships that ideally structure the work of architecture. Instead of the building
as a complete object to look at and admire, defined
most clearly by the facade that separates it from environing conditions and interior walls that segment the
spaces within, Leatherbarrow proposes the horizontality of levels, sections, lateral movement, and interface with vicinity. Horizontality and horizons focus
attention on a field of circumstances and terrain of
cultural practices (p. 172). This is why he directs our
attention to what is usually taken for granted, tacit,
and implicit, such as the backs of buildings rather
than their conspicuous faces.
The back of a building is like a horizon, full of
latent meaning for praxis—human activity within a
topographical, built, and cultural context. When we
shift our attention to the sectional and lateral, we see
how the backs of buildings are indirect and sustaining
of the activities that make up residence. To illustrate
this, Leatherbarrow analyzes several of Adolf Loos’s
buildings, which effectively blur the front-back distinction. In Loos’s Winteritz Villa, the entrance is itself
placed on the side of the house, adapted to plot configuration, bend in the street, and practical needs (p. 93).
More generally, the back of buildings is emblematic
for Leatherbarrow of that which is inconspicuous,
ready-for-use, and connected with environment.
Book Reviews
We usually lack the needed distance to have a nice
picture of the back, so it slides beneath our visual
awareness and is that much better adapted to accommodate practical life. The front of the building is all
show, crying out for attention, but that attenuates the
true purpose of building design—to sustain everyday
practice through interaction within and between
dwelling and surrounding conditions. The distinctiveness of facades “disintegrates ensembles” (p. 158), and
for Leatherbarrow, “The building is essentially an
ensemble of preparations for the typical practices of
residing” (p. 209).
Leatherbarrow analyzes in depth the designs of
Neutra’s buildings to illustrate how varying levels of
the lateral elements of floors and ceilings, rather than
walls and partitions, can create discrete settings and
direct movement. For example, in the Tremaine
House ceilings change levels five or six times with
accompanying change in surfaces (p. 35). At the
same time, these different levels provide natural
ventilation and indirect lighting. But the emphasis on
strata does not stop at the building’s edge for Leatherbarrow (or for Neutra). Three distinct horizons are
interwoven: land as it slopes into valley, sunken
reflecting pool and rock garden, and entry space.
Sections of the house correspond to or open on to
different levels in the surrounding topography. The
rooms are set off from one another by upward and
downward shifts that define paths, steps, landings,
floors, decks, terraces, and pools. This yields what
Leatherbarrow calls a “field of articulation” as the
site section cuts through surrounding terrain (p. 51).
By minimizing verticality, earlier architects, such
as Frank Lloyd Wright, pioneered the effort to “break
open the box.” Such architects freed interior space
for multiple arrangements and dwelling options while
connecting the inside of the building with its
surroundings. However, Leatherbarrow supplants
Wrightian “flow” with “reciprocation” and “knotting” between different spaces, such as inside and
outside. Not only does the notion of flow tend to
obliterate needed territorial definition and demarcation, but it promotes the goal of assimilating building
to site (p. 202)—as in Wright’s famous house,
Fallingwater (Bear Run, PA). Instead of Wrightian
isomorphism between architecture and terrain, Leatherbarrow offers a more dialectical interpretation of
lateral interface—transaction and reciprocation. This
is reminiscent of John Dewey’s pragmatism, as is
much of Leatherbarrow’s emphasis on praxis over
mere appearance. Leatherbarrow insists on capitalizing on the difference between built form and land
form: “This contrast gives both amplitude and dramatic tension to the field of articulation within any
given site” (p. 55).
Leatherbarrow notes with approval how the buildings of Aris Konstantinidis in Greece transform the
83
outside as it penetrates the dwelling: warm air is
cooled in summer and cool air is warmed in winter by
virtue of the modulating design of windows, apertures,
colonnades, roofline, and shades. Leatherbarrow’s idea
is a dynamic one—to use the resistance nature (or a
building tradition) affords to invent modes of interactions that connect building with topography and
climate in practically efficacious ways.
The question of how to integrate mass-produced
building ingredients so as to individualize design is
also answered by Leatherbarrow’s dialectic of difference. How can we design so that standardized,
repetitive furnishings and building constituents
(e.g., windows) can be site-specific—adapted to topography, culture, and practice (p. 122)? If architects
merely select from catalogues, the homogeneity of
the ready-mades will yield homogeneity in construction and style by stripping from a situation the irregularities that give it particular definition. A new kind
of creativity is needed to mix from different product
lines and the prefabricated with the handcrafted. The
irony for Leatherbarrow is that local constraints can
instigate freedom from the tyranny of product lines
by forcing the architect to innovative use of standardized elements (p. 127).
Design can adapt prefabricated constituents to topographic and practical specifics by shifting attention
from “objects [such as furnishings] as objects to the
actions they were meant to accommodate” (p. 154).
Only when we focus on their performative role
can we tell whether factory-made artifacts can be
appropriately combined with crafted materials. When
architecture successfully mediates between something unique (location, tradition, use) and standardized products, it effects the “recuperation of the same
by virtue of the different” (p. 168). Thus do the
Japanese dwellings built by Antonin and Noemi
Raymond effect the traditional design and function of
bamboo curtains and awnings with factory-made
materials (Chapter 4).
Ready-made objects can become “absorbed into
the situation” (p. 282) precisely because they are so
anonymous. Their potential to “accumulate” nontechnical relationships exists because they are themselves “unsaturated” with references. The erstwhile
sterility or uniformity of factory-made products actually gives them the potential to be adapted anywhere:
to meet territorial exigencies and to be appropriated
for practical life.
Leatherbarrow’s book should appeal to a wide
range of readers. Readers with varying degrees of
familiarity with architectural theory can be engaged
because Leatherbarrow presents an overview of his
position and proceeds to analyze particular buildings
in ever-increasing depth. As mentioned, his approach
has much in common with American pragmatism,
but easily consorts with Continental treatments of
84
themes descended from Heideggerian “dwelling.”
Perhaps most importantly, Leatherbarrow expresses
his philosophy of design and building in writing that
is both clear and poetic, at once useful and elegant,
like the best architecture.
JOSEPH KUPFER
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
Iowa State University
PICART, CAROLINE JOAN S.
Thomas Mann and Friedrich Nietzsche: Eroticism, Death, Music, and
Laughter. Atlanta: Rudolpi, 1999, 151 pp., 1 b&w
illus., $30.50 paper.
PICART, CAROLINE JOAN S.
Resentment and the
“Feminine” in Nietzsche’s Politico-Aesthetics.
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999, 206 pp.,
1 b&w illus., $49.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.
Caroline Picart has written two well-crafted scholarly
books that add nicely to the vast literature of
Nietzsche studies. Both have some relevance to aesthetics, as well as to other topics. The specific object
of the first is the influence of Nietzsche on Thomas
Mann. This book will be of special interest to Mann
scholars and to those who are curious about the
history of Nietzsche’s influence. Picart’s method is
to pair several of Nietzsche’s texts with several of
Mann’s. She seeks to make up for a lacuna in the literature on Nietzsche and Mann, having discovered
that the themes of eroticism, death, music, and laughter, although explored separately, have never been
addressed as an interweaving group in the works of
Nietzsche and Mann. Although Mann was an early
enthusiast, in his later writings he became increasingly critical of Nietzsche, associating him with
Wagnerian decadence and worse. Picart sees even the
later Mann, however, as close to Nietzsche in the
themes he covered, and in his methodology.
In the first chapter, Picart colorfully associates the
above mentioned four themes with the magic square
found in Dürer’s etching, Melancholia I. She finds a
fundamental ambiguity in this work: it both symbolizes deep sadness and higher intellectual pursuits.
She also finds this Faustian ambiguity in both
Nietzsche and Mann. This is consistent with her criticism of Nietzsche that he is a decadent romantic
despite his intentions.
Unfortunately, Mann misreads Nietzsche. And
reading Nietzsche by way of Mann, as Picart does,
may overemphasize his connections with decadence
and romanticism. Picart observes that in A Death
in Venice, Mann eliminates Nietzsche’s distinction
between the Asiatic Dionysus (noted by Nietzsche
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
for its “witches’ brew” of pain and pleasure) and the
Greek Dionysus, and reduces the latter to the former.
For Mann, but not for Nietzsche, the Dionysian is
associated with death and sterile exhaustion.
Reading Nietzsche in this way would put him
squarely in the camp of Wagner and romanticism.
However, Nietzsche’s adulation of Wagner and
Schopenhauer, even at the time of The Birth of
Tragedy, was not consistent with his overall position,
evident even then, and developed in later works, that
one ought to say “yes” to life. What Mann misses,
and oddly Picart too, is that the Greek Dionysus is
itself synthesized with the Greek Apollo to achieve
Nietzsche’s ideal art form, thus becoming transformed once again against decadence. Moreover,
although eroticism, music, and laughter play important roles in Nietzsche’s thought, the only role death
plays is as something that leads to rebirth.
The best part of both books is Picart’s analysis of
the development of Nietzsche’s political thought with
respect to modernity. She argues that Nietzsche
begins with a political aesthetic antidote to modernity
(before Zarathustra), then moves to aesthetic political inoculation (in Zarathustra), and then advocates
a crude political amputation of modernity in the postZarathustra period. Generally speaking, this is a
decline. The second book under review develops this
theme in relation to the concerns of contemporary
feminism. “Resentment,” or “ressentiment,” is
Nietzsche’s term for a stance he abhors. Yet Picart
believes that a “will-to-resentment” (against his own
romantic tendencies, against the herd) drives his
entire philosophy and that his approach to women is
an example of this. This book is a very careful and
well-researched analysis of the development, or
rather devolution, of Nietzsche’s concepts of the
“feminine” and of “woman” throughout his career.
He begins with a usually positive attitude toward the
“feminine,” as exemplified by his use of various
female mythological characters to represent valuable
traits. However, he becomes progressively misogynistic toward the end.
Picart believes that issues of gender, politics,
aesthetics, and myth are deeply intertwined in
Nietzsche’s thought, although less so in his last
period, which is more crudely political. “Aesthetics”
in the phrase “politico-aesthetics” refers not only to
Nietzsche’s philosophy of art, but also, and perhaps
mainly, to his approach to myth. Politico-aesthetics,
as far as I understand it, is the use of myth to promote
a certain future. We learn more about this idea in
the last chapter. There, Picart advocates a postNietzschean, postmodernist, and feminist version of
political aesthetics, inspired by Cixous and Trin
Minh-Ha, that seeks to move beyond resentment
and beyond the master-slave dialectic. This is a political multiculturalist aesthetics of resistance against
Book Reviews
traditional hierarchies and dichotomies. Picart ends
her book by discussing these issues in relation to
a drawing of her own titled Nurturance? and various
responses to it.
The idea of politico-aesthetics might be best
understood in terms of Picart’s analysis of
Nietzsche’s changing use of myth. She argues that
his early use of myth, as in The Birth of Tragedy, is
“benign” and even “empowering.” Unlike the Mann
book, here she takes into account the role of Apollo
as well as Dionysus in mediating the tension between
politics and aesthetics and between the “masculine”
and “feminine.” She then argues that myth’s function
is transformed in Zarathustra, where it becomes a
noble lie designed to save the polis. There, Nietzsche
weaves together the myths of Dionysus, Zeus, and
Apollo in an attempt to harness the feminine power
of fertility to a “phallic mother.” This involves
mythologizing Zarathustra’s body as supermasculine,
able to give birth itself. Following Irigaray, and
drawing on her interpretation of Book 4 as ironizing
his central doctrines, Picart sees this as expressing
Nietzsche’s own “womb envy.” She further argues
that the idea of the übermensch is presented by
Nietzsche as a “noble lie” designed to help “the many”
face the nightmare of eternal recurrence. Picart then
reads the post-Zarathustran period as Nietzsche’s
attempt at birthing the Übermensch. She characterizes these attempts as stillbirths rooted in resentment.
His resentment is based on his inability to rebirth
himself in disciples. In his final writings, Nietzsche’s
own body becomes the Dionysian body that must be
dismembered to bring a resurgence of life after
modernity. Here the body of “woman” must be harnessed and destroyed so as not to contaminate Nietzsche’s
own body.
Picart’s overall story concerning Nietzsche’s
descent into misogyny is well argued. Her analysis of
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, however, is problematic and
confusing. (Is the noble lie for the few [p. 151] or the
many [p. 152]?) I agree that the Overman as a future
race of man is a myth that is superceded by the
doctrine of eternal recurrence later in the book. The
end point, however, is not a deep pessimism (at least
about life), or even a rejection of the Overman as an
ideal. I also find Picart’s idea that the Übermensch is
a noble lie for the ordinary man implausible. For
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those few who confront the idea of eternal recurrence
the experience is nightmarish only at first: the Overman is someone who is able to say “yes” even to
the eternal recurrence of the most despicable.
“The many” do not even encounter the idea of eternal
recurrence. Why would Nietzsche want to provide a
noble lie for them? Picart thinks it is needed to lure
them back to life to hasten their destruction. But there
is no need for this, as they are never going to question
life anyway. Although Nietzsche promotes a distinction between exoteric and esoteric doctrine, this is
between what Zarathustra says to his disciples and
what he says to himself, the point being that the
deepest levels of insight are extremely difficult, and
actually impossible for all but a very few. Picart’s
analysis of Book 4 (as Nietzsche’s confession of
residual unhealthiness) fails to capture the point of
the last chapter of that book. Here we learn that
Zarathustra’s final sin is his pity for the “higher
men,” which Picart correctly describes as representing
distortions of aspects of his doctrine. He recognizes
here that these are not his “proper companions.”
His true children are to come, although they are
“near.” Contra Picart, Nietzsche is not, here, ironizing
Zarathustra’s dream of birthing the Übermensch in
Book 4, but reaffirming it, while recognizing its great
difficulty. This, then, poses problems for the womb
envy thesis.
There are many fine things in these two books,
particularly Picart’s analysis of the development of
Nietzsche’s attitudes toward women and the feminine
and her general attitude that one cannot separate
Nietzsche’s aesthetics from his politics. Although
I am not convinced of some of the central claims, her
detailed analysis contributes to deepening our understanding of Nietzsche’s philosophy in general and his
aesthetics in particular by forcing us to look at it from
a different perspective.
For the most part these books are clearly written,
however, I protest the frequent use of parentheses
and dashes within words, as in “(dis)empowered and
dis-eased” (p. 5, Resentment), which, although a common postmodern practice, is just plain confusing.
THOMAS LEDDY
Department of Philosophy
San Jose State University