WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY OF ART?

WHAT IS AN AUTHOR? Prof. Andrea Baldini — UDCI — Week 1

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY OF ART?

OVERVIEW

1. Commonsense idea of authorship (CIA)

2. Problems with CIA

3. Philosophical Challenges against CIA

4. Kierkegaard’s Multiple Authors

5. Liu Xie’s Public Authors

1. COMMONSENSE IDEA OF AUTHORSHIP (CIA)

➤ xAy only if y is substantive product of an intention- directed activity for which x is the source (Mag Uidhir 2013)

CIA’S IMPLICATIONS 1 ➤ Interpretation as intentionally

constrained

➤ What an artwork means is a function of the author’s intention

➤ Modest actual intentionalism (Carroll)

➤ Artworks as conversations

➤ Hypothetical intentionalism (Levinson)

➤ Meaning as best guess about plausible intentions

CIA’S IMPLICATIONS 2 ➤ Intellectual property rights

➤ Copyright

➤ Tangible medium (fixation requirement)

➤ Originality

2. PROBLEMS WITH CIA ➤ Hip-hop and the use of

samples and mixes

Street art & Graffiti

3. CHALLENGES AGAINST CIA ➤ Foucault (1969)

➤ author as an authoritarian interpretative principle for limiting the production of meaning

➤ CIA as a modern invention

➤ Author as “text” vs author as an individual

➤ Author vs writer

4. KIERKEGAARD’S MULTIPLE AUTHORS

➤ Uses of pseudonyms

➤ Different voices in disagreement

➤ Aesthetic author

➤ Sensuous

➤ Pleasurable

➤ Religious author

➤ Transcendent

➤ “in fear and trembling”

“There was a man whose chatter certain circumstances made it necessary for me to listen to. At every opportunity he was ready with a little philosophical lecture, a very tiresome harangue. Almost in despair, I suddenly discovered that he perspired copiously when talking. I saw the pearls of sweat gather on his brow, unite to form a stream, glide down his nose, and hang at the extreme point of his nose in a drop-shaped body. From the moment of making this discovery, all was changed. I even took pleasure in inciting him to begin his philosophical instruction, merely to observe.

— Søren Kierkegaard

RELIGIOUS AUTHOR (RA) ➤ RA operating under self-denial

and humility

➤ RA suppressing personality as a means to express God’s word

➤ Transcendence of the mundane into the heavenly

5. LIU XIE’S PUBLIC AUTHOR ➤ Authors as expressing their

feelings, ideas, emotions, etc.

➤ Authenticity

➤ Physical-and-spiritual qi as the origin of writing

➤ Embodied aspect of intellectual life

➤ Goal of writing as political life

➤ Ethical/public dimension as prominent over expressive/ private dimension

IMPLICATIONS OF RA AND PA ➤ Meaning?

➤ Interpretation?