Interpretation, Pleasure, and Value
Interpretation, Pleasure, and Value
Interpretation, Pleasure, and Value
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Discussion
51
NEHAMAS
Departmentof Philosophy
PrincetonUniversity
Princeton,New Jersey08544
1. Richard Shusterman,"The End of Aesthetic Experience," TheJournalof Aestheticsand Art Criticism55 (1997):
29-41. Referencesto Shusterman'sarticle will be given parenthetically in the text.
2. Neil Postman,AmusingOurselvesto Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Viking,
1985).
3. Richard Shusterman,Pragmatist Aesthetics (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1992).
4. Cleanth Brooks, The Well WroughtUrn (New York:
Harcourt,Brace & Co., 1947), p. 180; Yvor Winters, "The
ExperimentalSchool in AmericanPoetry,"in his In Defense
of Reason (Denver: Alan Swallow, 1947).
5. Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature
(HarvardUniversityPress, 1985); "WhatShouldWe Expect
from Reading?(There Are Only Aesthetic Values),"Salmagundi 111 (1996): 27-58.
6. Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, trans. H. T.
Lowe-Porter,(New York:Knopf, 1968), p. 498.
Interpretation,Pleasure, and
Value in Aesthetic Experience
As an admirerof AlexanderNehamas'swritings,I am
gratefulfor his critiqueof my aesthetic theory,but regret that he saddles me with alien views. I certainly
do not think that aesthetics is "irrelevant"to artists,
who frequentlystudy aesthetic issues by readingaesthetic texts, often citing them in their work, and even
soliciting them from philosophers for their catalogues.1 Moreover,though the elite fine arts may be
largely "irrelevantto the broadpublic,"I could never
argue that this entails that aesthetics is irrelevant,
since I insist that aesthetics involves more than the
elite fine arts, emerging in many other areas where
appreciativetaste is exercised. Nehamas shares this
view, demonstratingit in his fine work on television.
We also agree that both philosophy and life can be
pursuedand judged on aesthetic grounds. If my article on aesthetic experience did not cite this as exemplifying the aesthetic in "somethingoutside art,"it is
simply because pragmatistaesthetics construes philosophy as an art of living-hence not entirely outside the concept of art.2
Ratherthan reformulatemy detailed views on popular art, which many like Nehamas already know
from Pragmatist Aesthetics (and which are further
elaboratedelsewhere), I simply remindreadersof my
sharp critiqueof Frankfurt-schoolpessimism, which
engendered my alternative position of meliorism.3
Recognizing that popularart needs criticism and improvementbecause it still leaves much to be desired,
meliorism conversely insists that such art can greatly
reward critical attention and is worth improving,
since it can and often does achieve real aestheticmerit
and social good. As popular art has both good and
bad dimensions, so does the developmentof informa-
52
tional technology that greatly spurredthe rise of popular culture. If fragmentationthrough informational
overflow makes traditional aesthetic experiences of
unity more difficult to achieve, it compensatesin other
ways, even aesthetically,as I insist, by contributingto
some of today's "mostexciting, rewardingartistic encounters."4
The considerableconvergenceof our views is often
concealed by Nehamas's exquisite skill in polemical
interpretation,which is capable of unhinging my casual allusion to sunsets from its commonplacecontext
and transformingit into the very ideal of my theory of
aesthetic experience. Though a far less avid polemicist, I realize thatit is more useful to underlinethe serious issues that really divide us.
1. Our oldest, perhaps deepest disagreement concerns interpretation.Agreeing thatart'sinterpretation
cannot be mechanical or separatedfrom experience,
we differ on what is demandedof understandingand
interpretations I allow a functional distinction between understandingand interpretationin both art
and other matters,while Nehamas insists, after Nietzsche, that "every view is an interpretation."Moreover, while I accept conventional understandingsas
adequatefor many contexts (including many artistic
ones), Nehamas insists that understandingor interpretationrequiresa more elaborateprocess of "working it out for oneself" to make it distinctively "one's
own"; so, studentswho understanda text either in its
conventionalmeaning or throughsomeone else's expert interpretationdo not really understandthe text at
all. One advantage I find in distinguishing between
understandingand interpretation(and between different levels in each) is that we can allow that conventional understandingsare understandings,while
insisting thatthey can or shouldbe improvedby more
deliberateefforts of interpretation,whether personal
or collaborative.
2. Pleasure is the second important issue that divides us, and Nehamas joins some excellent French
thinkersin criticizing my aesthetics for its alleged hedonism.6 Recent aesthetic theory typically undervalues the role of pleasureby concentratingon cognition
and falsely presumingthatpleasureand cognition are
somehow conflicting aims ratherthan the closest of
allies. The other reason for deprecating pleasure is
theory's failure to recognize its complexity. While
ancient and medieval thinkers explored its rich variety (e.g., voluptas,gaudium, laetitia, delectatio) and
could see its role in the most sublime, transformative
religious experience, today we simply assume that
pleasure must be something banally light, easy, and
self-indulgent-just pleasantness or fun. Nehamas
exemplifies this tendency to trivialize pleasure
throughconflation with the "pleasant."He therefore
dismisses my recognition of unpleasantyet valuable
feelings, falsely imputing to me the view that aes-
thetic experienceis only "valuablebecause it is pleasant"and that it must "not involve ... the possibility, at
least, of a serious transformationof the person who
undergoes it," even though I repeatedlyinsist (p. 30;
p. 41, n. 30) on the deeply transformativepower of
aesthetic experience.
This conflation of pleasure and thepleasant is also
the reasonwhy Nehamasnot only mistakes the sunset
example as central, but then goes on to suppose that
the experienceof a sunsetmustbe "mindlessly"pleasant. But there is nothing to preventus from having a
sunset experience involving complex interpretation
or "a sense of foreboding, insecurity,even of danger"
(say, before some anticipatedterrorsof the night).We
might even derive some particularly exhilarating
pleasure or delight from experiencingprecisely such
unpleasant feelings. Eighteenth-centurytheories of
the sublime were not blind to this. My case for the importance of aesthetic experience does not rely on its
pleasantness, nor solely on its wide range of deeper
pleasures, but also on its vital phenomenological
vividness, throughwhich not only art's pleasuresbut
its other values (cognitive, ethical, etc.) can emerge
with more intensity and life.
3. The third crucial issue is the severing of value
from experience. I argue that experience is important
for aesthetics, partly because pleasure (and, more
generally, intensified feeling) is important, and that
such feelings are inherently experiential. Nehamas
resists this argumentby trying "to separatepleasure
from value" so that value can be untied from experience and insteaddefined as "thebroadeningof possibility," which "is in principle something we admire
and value" (even apparentlyif the possibility broadened is one of error, evil, and other things we deplore). I have a pragmatist'sdifficulty in understanding what value and "new possibilities" could mean
when severed from all experience (actual, future, or
imagined). When the link to experience is severed,
the notion of value seems too anemically vague and
metaphysicalto do any useful work.
Nehamas'sown arguments,oddly enough, betraya
recognition that aesthetic value cannot be separated
from experience. He claims that "the main groundof
aesthetic value is the ability of what has it to make
palpablethe existence of new possibilities." And Nehamas rightly recognizes that this value of making
new possibilities palpable can only be realized
through aesthetic understanding.But he also claims
that such understandingrequires a personal process
of interpretationwhich "has to be worked out internally" to make the understanding "one's own."
This demands an experiential process, hence Nehamas's claim that "interpretationand experience
cannotbe separated."But if aesthetic value cannotbe
separated from understanding, and understanding
requires interpretation,and interpretationcannot be
Discussion
53
Departmentof Philosophy
Temple University
Philadelphia,Pennsylvania 19122
INTERNET:
SHUSRICH@ASTRO.OCIS.TEMPLE.EDU
1. ArthurDanto and Jean-FrangoisLyotard are contemporary philosophers whose aesthetic writings are avidly
read and solicited by visual artists. But even my own texts
have sometimes been used andcommissionedby such artists,
most recently by the Germanartists RosemarieTrockeland
CarstenHoller for their installationHausfur Schweine und
Menschen,created for the 1997 Documenta exhibition. My
text, entitled "AHouse Divided," appearsin DocumentaXthe book (Kassel: Cantz, 1997), pp. 650-652.
2. See especially RichardShusterman,PracticingPhilosophy: Pragmatism and the Philosophical Life (New York:
Routledge, 1997), but also Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living
Beauty,RethinkingArt (Oxford:Blackwell, 1992).
3. See Pragmatist Aesthetics, chaps. 7-8; "PopularArt
and Education," Studies in Philosophy and Education 13
(1995): 150-158; "Breakingout of the White Cube,"in Suzi
Gablik, ed., ConversationsBeforethe End of Time(London:
Thames and Hudson, 1995), pp. 247-265; "Rap Remix:
Pragmatism, Postmodernism, and Other Issues in the
House," Critical Inquiry 22 (1995): 150-158; and Practicing Philosophy,chap. 5.
4. Richard Shusterman,"The End of Aesthetic Experience, TheJournalof Aestheticsand Art Criticism55 (1997):
38. Subsequentcitations from my article appearwith parenthetical page references.
5. This is why I am careful to describethe cyborg's products as "interpretiveoutput"or "interpretivepropositions"
ratherthan gracing them with the term "interpretation."For
Nehamas's account of interpretationsee his Nietzsche: Life
as Literature(Harvard University Press, 1985); quotation
from p. 66. My theory of interpretationcan be found in
PragmatistAesthetics,chaps. 4, 5; and Sous l'interpritation
(Paris: L'6clat, 1994). I challenge the metaphysicalunderpinnings of Nehamas's Nietzschean interpretivetheory in
"Nietzsche and Nehamason OrganicUnity,"SouthernJournal of Philosophy26 (1988): 379-392.
6. See, for example,RainerRochlitz, "Esth6tiquesHedonistes," Critique:revueginirale des publicationsfrancaises et
9trangeres540 (May 1992): 353-373.