Humans Paint In "The State of Nature"
Thoughts from A Conversation with Pae Veo on Philosophy, Art, Cultivation, Skill, and More
Speaking with Pae Veo is a joy, and we always discuss a slew of subjects. I never feel like I can write notes down fast enough…We noted that, though there can overlap, “talking about something” is not the same as “talking it,” which is to say “talking about philosophy” is not the same as “talking philosophically”; “talking about art” is not the same as “talking artistically”; and so on. As C.S. Lewis noted in his “Meditation in a Toolshed,” looking at a ray of light is not the same as looking through it. Sight is not seeing.
We discussed the tense and difficult relationship between art and philosophy, and considered that art is at its best when it considers philosophical subjects, as philosophy is at its best when it considers experience, phenomenology, and other topics of art. However, both philosophy and art tend to “overreach” into the other, resulting in mediocre art or mediocre philosophy. How do we maintain the best of both? Well, that would require skill and the ability to handle tension (the idea of “art as skill” versus “art as taste” was a theme throughout our talk).
Alright, fine, but why should we bother to cultivate these skills? Well, this paper will suggests there are likely great benefits to the skills, but also because art and creativity might be expressions of our deepest natures. In philosophy, Rousseau and Hobbes famously provided us with thought experiments about “the state of nature” to justify their philosophical projects, with Hobbes emphasizing our “brutishness” and Rousseau emphasizing our “perfect freedom,” but personally I find the work of G.K. Chesterton most fascinating, not only because of it’s innovation but also because we have pictorial evidence that Chesterton’s “state of nature” has something to do with reality. As discussed in “Philosophy & Art” by O.G. Rose, Chesterton points out that what we know about cavemen is that they liked to paint: the world is filled with (often intricate) cave art. Yes, cavepeople also killed and hunted, but art is right there at the start of history. It was not taught in schools. It was likely not something we were moralized and pressured into doing. It’s just something we did, a raw experience of “free time” and hence possibly unique expression of “essence” (a good bet, at least), which suggests that if we don’t cultivate the skill now, we will leave out of our lives something which expresses a deep human nature.
‘[P]eople have been interested in everything about the caveman expect what he did in the cave,’ Chesterton tells us, and where Plato perhaps saw in cave-images temptations to avoid truth, Chesterton saw truth in the images.¹ ‘Art is the signature of man,’ Chesterton says, which would suggest that a world lacking in artistic ability will be a world that struggles to leave it’s mark.²
I
Art is a skill. If we are a “white belt” in martial arts, it’s not a matter of elitism that we can’t kick a board in two: it’s simply a result of the facticity of the situation. We need x skill to do y act. Likewise, we cannot see how philosophy and art can fit together without x skill level, and if we only have z skill level, then there will be “rational reason” to think philosophy and art can’t go together, and to thus design academic departments accordingly. Unfortunately, if ultimately philosophy and literature need one another to avoid effacement, then designing departments this way could lead to the annihilation of both (for “rational” reason).
Making this dialectical balance difficult to maintain, “the principles of art” are not codified laws but more like movements in jazz improvisation: there is a right and wrong, but it cannot be universalized, only known in the performance by those who are participating in the improvisation. It is very difficult to understand why the piano plays this here, the sax that there, and yet when we hear it, we can just “hear” that it’s right or wrong, mysteriously and suddenly. It’s very hard to explain, and yet it’s also “concrete”: the phrase “it’s hard to explain” sounds fluffy and relativistic, but that’s just because the phrase “it’s hard to explain” is located in this paper (outside a jazz improvisation). If there was a jazz improvisation going on right now and we were part of it (either performing or listening) versus reading and/or writing this document, the point being made here would be much clearer and even “practical.” It is not the case that “abstract” and “concrete” cannot overlap.
Anyway, the point is that “artistic ability” and “dialectical balances” are matters of skill, cultivation, and “conditioning” (to allude to “Conditionalism” by O.G. Rose), and the very act of trying to consider them within a simple dichotomy of “subjective vs objective” contributes to our confusion. The ability to write like William Faulkner (for example) might require a “black belt” of skill in the realm of artistic apprehension, and please note that to claim “it requires training and cultivation to write like Faulkner” is not a claim of elitism, but simply like claiming, “It takes training to know how to ride a horse.” We all know that “not just anyone” can be an electrician, but likewise “not just anyone” can write like Faulkner.
This might seem obvious, for few dispute that writing is a skill that takes practice, but I think it’s also a skill to understand and appreciate Faulkner. We have been trained and habituated to think of this as “elitist,” but it is not elitist to say that it takes time to train our tastebuds to like wine or that we have to run each day to be able to run a marathon. We “get” that liking wine and running races require training, and claiming this doesn’t strike us as elitist, and yet saying, “It takes time to like Faulkner,” can so strike us, but I would argue this is a mistake which “seems right” simply because of our socialization and what people say. We have been trained to associate art with “upper class,” and so think of “coming to understand Faulkner” as elitist, but I think this is not only a mistake, but a mistake that might contribute to people struggling to escape lower classes. Why exactly is because I think creativity is essential to Capitalism and its development, as argued throughout O.G. Rose (see “The Creative Concord” and “The Dialectic Between Creativity and Energy”), and learning to understand Faulkner is an act which can make us more creative and hence members of “the artifex,” which in turn can help us improve our socioeconomic wellbeing — but this is a point I will elaborate on in The Fate of Beauty.
Since anyone can “read” Faulkner, it seems like anyone can “get” Faulkner, and so people who don’t can be viewed just as “valid” as those who do “get” Faulkner. In this way, it can be easy to think of Faulkner as “a matter of taste,” while it’s much harder, given the raw facticity of the experience, to say “running a marathon is a matter of taste.” Sure, enjoying a marathon could be a matter of taste, but the act of being able to run one is not merely something we can “want to do” and thus be able to do. Training is involved, and there really is little way to participate in the act of running and not directly experience the feeling that “training would help.” But when we read a book, we often just “read it” — the act itself doesn’t readily say to us that “we need training” (and it doesn’t help how different book can prove, while running is more constant in the act itself). Sure, we might not understand what we read, but that could just be the fault of the writer, whereas when we find ourselves out of breath trying to run, there’s little doubt who is responsible. This slight difference in “the ease of locating responsibility” goes a long way to explaining why it is so easy for us to dismiss “art as elitist” versus think in terms of “the skill of understanding art.” Art ends up being a matter of taste versus practice, both in terms of doing it and understanding it, while athletics are much easier for the majority to see as requiring practice and training.
But this bring us to another difference: it is much easier to watch football and enjoy it, whereas it’s hard to even read Faulkner without disliking the experience. Now, this point cannot be pushed too far, for there are sports which require education to appreciate and there are books which are enjoyable to read, but “in the social arena,” what is emphasized is professional sports like the NFL or NBA, which are generally easier to watch and enjoy, while reading isn’t emphasized, and when it is the books which are marketed tend to be fantasy and science fiction versus literary fiction (let alone difficult literary fiction). Not always, no, and I don’t want to push this point too hard, only suggest that the average and normal “social setting” contributes to the notion that “art is elitist.”
Is it better to be a “black belt” than not? If so and we accept the premise that “liking Faulkner” is a skill, then I think it is fair to say that “it’s better to like Faulkner than not,” as it’s generally better “to be able to run a marathon than not.” This has nothing to do with elitism, individual superiority, or the like, but everything to do with skill. There are plenty of people who understand Faulkner who cannot run marathons and plenty of people who can run marathons who don’t understand Faulkner: we all have to choose the lives we are going to live and what we are going to focus on, and there’s nothing wrong with that — I am certainly not saying the person who understands Faulkner is better than a person who does not. Rather, I am saying “the skill of understanding Faulkner” is better to have than not, though it’s also better to have the ability to run and cook than not, and yet we cannot be skilled in everything. We have to allocate our time and make “tragic” decisions — this is part of life. My point is only that “understanding Faulkner” is a skill, not a matter of taste, which I think is important because when we think of “art as taste,” then indeed we think our relation to art is personal, meaning it has implications for who we are as a person.
“Tastes” and “preferences” feel personal, and so if I say to you, “Red wine is bad,” and it is your personal favorite, it can be easy to take this personally. Not necessarily, no, but it’s very easy to associate “personal preference” with “the personal.” Considering this, if we understand art as “a matter of taste” versus skill, it’s going to feel as if our relation to art is one that is “personal” versus something we can cultivate, and that quickly gets linked up with “personal standing” and “status anxiety,” which further contributes to art being associated with class and elitism.
Seen as a matter of taste, it can feel like a “personal attack” to suggest that artistic appreciation is a skill and something we can cultivate, and certainly the cultivation of skill and ability always has something to do with “the person”: if I say, “We need to exercise,” that too can be taken as a personal attack. But the very physical and tangible reality of exercise can help blunt this feeling, for we physically see our bodies and physically feel the consequences of not exercising. But it’s much harder not to take personally the statement, “You need to appreciate Faulkner,” for this indeed feels like a “personal attack” versus an assessment of a skill. Also, exercise can feel like a matter of life and death, so it’s easier to think of someone who tells us to exercise as someone who is just giving us “tough love.” But the person who says, “You need to appreciate art,” just sounds like a jerk — but perhaps not if we understand that our ability to appreciate art can directly impact our ability to emphasize, understand people, apprehend the world, and the like. Without empathy, we can end up in personal drama, time and time again, and without a sense of beauty, we might find it hard to be motivated to live our lives, making us vulnerable to mental health problems. In this way, the statement, “You need to appreciate art,” could be an example of “tough love” identical to the statement, “You need to exercise.” Far from a “personal attack,” this could be a statement trying to maintain our “personal well-being.”
There is “social reinforcement” that exercise is good and important, and so people who voice “tough love” about our need to exercise can be understood, but since there is “a social notion” that art is elitist, then it’s much more difficult for people to be told, “You need to get better at appreciating art,” and not take this as snobbery. Hopefully though, by thinking of art as “a skill,” both in its creation and appreciation, this notion of elitism can be worked against, especially if we also understand “the skills of art” can have tangible and positive impacts on our lives. Art changes the world.
II
Though in this work it might sound like we are saying “Faulkner is better than Marvel” arbitrary, this is not a hierarchy. In baseball, is it “elitist” to say it is better to improve our ability to hit in addition to the skill of throwing pitches? I don’t think so: that is simply the rules of the game. Likewise, the moment we watch a movie, read a book, or the like, we are “entering into the game of art,” for Faulkner and Marvel are not different in “kind.” And both of these cultivate different skills “for the same game” (of being human), though arguably it’s perhaps “more tempting” to fall into the mistake of “just watching Marvel” than “just reading Faulkner,” hence why an emphasis on “needing to read Faulkner” is perhaps warranted. Entertainment is not inherently bad, no, but it perhaps uniquely temps us.
But isn’t Marvel more enjoyable? Ah, maybe, but then the question is this: What is our “metric” for a good experience of art? In other words, what is the point of enjoying art? Is it for fun? Well, is baseball about having fun? Yes and no: if we say “Yes,” we risk being reductionistic, but it also seems wrong to say, “No.” Baseball is about “something else.” Rising to the occasion. Training. Hard work. Overcoming. Yes, “fun” matters, but it’s also something more. So it goes with art, but that only makes sense if we “get” that humans are ontologically artistic and creative (as we get from Chesterton). There is something about sports that is important because of what humans “are”; likewise, there is something about art which is important because of what humans “are.” If we say art is just about enjoyment, that might get us into trouble. And perhaps art is uniquely easy to confuse as “just being about entertainment” — hard to say, but I stress again that we must avoid this mistake best we can.
Also, as we know there is a difference between “watching baseball” and “playing baseball,” so there is a big difference between “watching a movie” and “making a movie.” People who do sports seriously just “are” different — in how they look, how they think, etc. — and so it goes with “doing art.” Perhaps not always in good ways, but there are consequences of cultivation. And it is on grounds of “cultivation” versus “consumption” that we can start to understand why Faulkner has value, for it is better to be able to “apprehend more” than less. Generally, it is better to be good at judgment then not; it is better to be good at discerning than not; it is better to be creative than not — I could go on. On these grounds, it is better to cultivate artistic ability than not. Philosophy, intelligence, discernment — these are skills. We have associated them too long with static and unchanging personalities traits, as if things we either have or don’t, contributing to vast confusion about the arts and the value in reading Faulkner. As I stress, we need to return to a language of “habits” and “skills,” especially “conditioning” (a personal favorite of mine).
Tendency is not the same as ability: even if some people have a tendency and orientation to do philosophy, it does not mean they are skilled in it (so it goes with art, creativity, and the like). Inclination is not mastery, which suggests that a culture which overemphasizes personality might be a culture which lacks mastery. Also, many philosophical and artistic skills are “preventative” (a point which brings to mind “Reality Handicaps Preventative Measures” by O.G. Rose), meaning that if we have them we might avoid drama situations we otherwise would have suffered (to make an example). Unfortunately, that means we never see “for sure” the fruits of learning these abilities, and thus we can always wonder if they bear any fruits at all. Preventative measures never experientially validate their existences, which might hint at why history repeats: stopping the decline of a nation requires preventing the decline from happening, for otherwise we’re responding to a decline that has already started. And ideas are not experiences…
Literature and philosophy can teach us to take seriously things no one forces us to take seriously. If we don’t take things seriously before they are serious, they can become serious problems. In this way, they can train us to engage in “preventative measures” and live according to ideas, not just react to experiences, which seems to contribute to nations falling into decline and despair. Generally, nobody forces us to take art seriously, so taking art seriously trains us to take seriously things nobody else cares about. If making the world a better place requires taking seriously things nobody else takes seriously, then art trains us to think and act in ways necessary for making the world a better place. In this way, not only might art help us be “more human,” but it also might help a civilization to “sustain itself.” “The ground of being” was classically indeed considered something “sustaining” — and God is considered creative.
IV
We can now approach a question: Would an alternative world without William Faulkner be much different? Would the loss of Faulkner, Joyce, Woolf, and the like really show? Why can’t we just get by with Harry Potter? Well, I think the world would be different, but I also think the world would struggle to tell how. The skills we gain from “difficult art” are skills we don’t know we don’t have if we don’t have them, generally because we really don’t know what it’s like to miss out an experience we don’t ever experience. We can “know” that Italy is a beautiful country, but if we’ve never been, we don’t really know what this fully means. The skills of art have a lot to do with “quality of experience,” and so if we lack these skills we lack experiences, and experiences have to be undergone for us to really get their “fullness.” If we don’t, we don’t know what we’re missing. We can’t.
I am going to assume that the skills it takes to understand Faulkner are different from the skills needed to read Harry Potter, which isn’t to say Harry Potter is bad (we can read both), only that the undertakings are different. They require different abilities, and based on the abilities we have, we can undergo different experiences and different qualities of experience. This in mind, let us also understand that everything we experience is “aesthetic.”
What do I mean by this? It’s elaborated on in “The Blank Canvas,” but basically everything around us is experienced with color, shape, sound, and the like: “the material,” we could say, which makes up a work of art is the material according to which we experience all of reality. Art is not radically different from what we usually experience; rather, art is on the same gradient (it only seems to be something “totally other” than everyday life). Art is assembled differently, intentionally, and uniquely, and certainly art can entail events and stories which have never happened, but “the raw material” itself out of which art is made is ubiquitous. It is all aesthetic, which would suggest that even if spaceships out of Star Wars don’t exist in reality, the potential for spaceships is perhaps still present with us. After all, it’s all the same “material.”
I make this point to suggest that our ability to apprehend and experience art could have an impact on our ability to apprehend and experience everyday life. It’s all aesthetic, and so if we improve our skills in experiencing the aesthetics of art, we might in turn improve our ability to apprehend and experience everyday life. That said, the main point is this: We cannot rid the world of art without riding the world of aesthetics in general. Every aesthetic experience can be “framed” by someone as artistic, and thus if there is aesthetics, there will be art, and if there is being there will be aesthetics. Considering this, a world without art would indeed be very different (it might be a black hole).
I cannot imagine a world without art that isn’t also without aesthetics, and that means an alternative world without art seems impossible to me. But aren’t I saying then that basically everything is “aesthetics?” Yes, but please don’t mistake me as saying, “Everything is art” — that’s a different argument for a different time — but I am saying that there is “reason to think” that skills we develop while practicing art can carry over into our everyday lives. Art could be the space in which we focus on “aesthetics” and our relation to them, making it possible for us to cultivate ourselves in a manner so that we can generate better aesthetic abilities.
Marvel and Faulkner are different in degree, not in kind, which is for me a reason to further resist “artistic elitism” (they are both aesthetic experiences, and they both play important roles). If I were to say Marvel movies are 20 pound dumbbells while Faulkner is 50 pound dumbbells, it might sound like I’m saying Faulkner is better than Marvel, but I must work with 20 pound dumbbells if I’m to ever get to the place where I can handle 50: the lesser weights are necessary to advance. Furthermore, even if I can lift 50 pound dumbbells, there are times when I need to train with 20 pound dumbbells for different exercises: it’s not the case that I advance to higher amounts of weight and then never work with lesser weight.
Some literary fiction can struggle to entertain, and entertainment is a valid and legitimate function of story (we should not moralize against it). When my ability to write entertaining work is weak, I should revisit Marvel to gain the lessons, as an entertaining story-writer might turn to Faulkner to figure out how to integrate technique that powerfully describes the inner lives of characters. Similarly, someone who enjoys Bergman might need to watch Iron Man to regain “grounding,” which is to say to not get lost in the psychologies of characters so much that their actions and ability to overcome conflict are not forgotten. Again, it all depends.
All experience is aesthetic, and Marvel and Faulkner are on the same gradient, providing different “exercises” for different times. This doesn’t mean “all” works of art have a role to help cultivate us, for there are indeed bad movies, but we shouldn’t assume that “entertaining movies are bad” while “Avant Garde movies are good,” for that is too simplistic and assumes “more weight is always better” in exercise (there are some very bad Avant Garde movies out there).
Alright, but isn’t it better to get to the place where we can “lift more weight” than not? Ah, this is where we much map out nuance: we cannot say Faulkner is always better than Marvel, but we can say it is better to “apprehend more of the world” than less (aesthetically), as we can say it is better to experience more beauty than less, and it might be the case that Faulkner can expand our “aesthetic apprehensions” in ways Marvel cannot, though Marvel could develop us in ways that Faulkner couldn’t — hard to say. Generally, I think it’s “better” to expand our ability to apprehend greater artistic and aesthetic horizons than not (though it’s also not so simple, because we have to allocate our time and make tradeoffs), but at the same time we cannot readily say in what artistic experience we uniquely expand our aesthetic capacities. We may gain in Marvel what we cannot gain in Faulkner, but the reverse is also true, and so we should try to experience many different kinds of art, and never place ourselves above any of it. We should be “open.”
However, because of the culture and interests of the society, it might be easier to “gain the skills” we can gain from Marvel films than say what we can gain from Faulkner, because Faulkner is not readily available or “at hand” in the society. Not as many people read Faulkner as watch Marvel movies, and that means “the skills of Faulkner” are rarer and not skills we are likely to “just happen to gain” by living in a society which emphasizes Faulkner. And it is on this point that I think we can start to see why we have to make a point to read Faulkner versus make a point to watch Marvel: the emphasize isn’t meant to suggest “absolute hierarchy,” but to suggest “the social condition.” Just by living in America, we’ve probably already encountered and gained the skills of Marvel (whatever those might be), even if we haven’t seen the movies ourselves, because the people around us likely have and “act out” the movies accordingly.
This suggests the validity of the category of “popular art,” though that can be used by artists as an insult. I personally don’t mean it that way, but to instead mean that if “x is popular art,” the skills, ways of thinking, and the like which we can gain from x is that which we have likely already gained, just by virtue of being alive in our given culture.³ Faulkner, on the other hand, can potentially offer us ways of apprehending that are not “readily at hand” in our culture and society, hence why it is not “popular art.” Again, just because art isn’t “popular” doesn’t mean it is “artistically superior” or something — such a claim is outside the scope of what I want to propose. Mainly, I just want to say that Faulkner is readily available to shape our way of “taking in the world” in new and valuable ways.
V
To review, a few points:
1. Based on Chesterton, there is “reason to think” that art and creativity are essential to human “being.”
2. Though we always must make tradeoffs, it is generally better to cultivate a skill than not.
3. Works of art like Faulkner and Marvel movies are not “different in kind,” only different in the kinds of skills, mental models, and the like which the two can provide for us.
4. The skill to read Faulkner is likely not as “given to us” by the social order as is the skill that can be gained from watching Marvel.
5. Thus, to gain the skills of Faulkner, we will likely have to make a point to read Faulkner.
6. It is only probable that the majority of people will possess the skills of Marvel versus the skills of Faulkner.
7. It is “a good bet” to say that it would better for the average person to read Faulkner than to watch another Marvel movie (though it would easily be bad not to watch Marvel movies at all, though it could be argued that the same skills could be gained from other movies which are similar in kind).
8. In this way, it can be justified to emphasize the need for us to “read Faulkner” over say “watching Marvel.”
9. The more aesthetic skills we gain, the more we can undergo ontological changes. We can gain new ways of apprehension.
10. Since it is probable the average person hasn’t “gained the skills of Faulkner” versus “the skills of Marvel,” it is justified to emphasize “a need to reader Faulkner,” but at the same time it wouldn’t be justified to “bash Marvel” outright. Sure, if Marvel makes a bad film, that’s one thing, but it’s also wrong to associate “entertainment” with “bad.”
We gain “ways of being” through aesthetics and art, but aesthetics also need philosophy to determine the nature of those “ways of being” and how we can best manifest and live them. The dismissal of art by philosophy has been dire, but so has the dismissal of philosophy by art: without philosophy, art has struggled to justify itself or to articulate why we shouldn’t all just watch Marvel movies all the time. Yes, there are skills and “ways of being” which Marvel movies can give us that are good, but if that’s all we consumed, we would have trouble. It is like diet: fiber is good for us, but not if fiber is all we eat; calcium is good for us, but not if calcium is all we digest. We could say that Faulkner and Marvel are different parts of a healthy diet, but “what is good for us” is always contingently such, dependent on if we don’t go too far and eat too much of the one thing out of balance with everything else.
Philosophy was once considered “the handmaiden of theology”; here, I am suggesting that art is “the servant of philosophy” as philosophy is “the servant of art.” The two serve one another, perhaps like a marriage: there is no hierarchy, only equal “self-giving.” For me, if philosophy and art don’t learn to be “self-giving” to one another again, then “the great divorce” between the two will continue to perpetuate, and we as human beings will continue to suffer and devolve as a result. Yes, philosophy and art must be kept in their “proper bounds,” as husband and wife must respect their differences, but that is very different from saying the two should be “divorced.” But that is currently how they are positioned in the world today, and I fear the consequences have been great.
Philosophy helps us discern how we cultivate artistic abilities, as artistic abilities can help us discern how we should carry out philosophy. I personally believe the ignorance of art has contributed to philosophy falling into a dichotomy between “objectivity vs subjectivity,” for example, whereas I want to stress Conditionalism. More examples could be made, but mainly I want to say that “the divorce” of philosophy and art has been costly to both fields.
.
.
.
Notes
¹Chesterton, G.K. The Everlasting Man. San Francisco, CA. Ignatius Press, 1993: 28.
²Chesterton, G.K. The Everlasting Man. San Francisco, CA. Ignatius Press, 1993: 34.
³Please don’t mistake me either as claiming that art is only “good” to the degree we “gain” something from it — there is value in the experience and emotions themselves — though I also think it’s dangerous to think that art and what we consume doesn’t work on us and shape us in profound ways.
.
.
.
For more by Pae Veo at Attention, please visit: