Art and Understanding

1. Hegel states that art is dead. How does he arrive at this viewpoint? Answer by giving a brief summary of his philosophy. 

Hegel is said to have been the most closely identified with the cognitive theory of art. He states that there are 5 different types of art but also gives us a philosophical view of art in general. He states that  art in the modern period is dead. Unlike other philosophers who see philosophy as the intellectual study of a set of universal and timeless problems, Hegel sees it as more of a progressive development over time in which the human mind comes to understand itself better. Human understanding is different depending on time and place but at the heart of it all is Religion or the life of the spirit. This is because essential human nature is subjective and not objective. Within our bodies, lies an object had the ability of thinking, willing and feeling. It the self-knowledge of this that make up our true nature. This knowledge also free us from the causal and biological forces that we share with other physical and animal natures.

Throughout the ages we have seen human development marked through the progression of art through religion to philosophy. Philosophy is the conceptual grasp of truth and art is the presentation and understanding of truth by the means of images of sight, sound and touch. This pattern of 'art-religion-philosophy' is not just found within history but also within each history of these successive cultures. His example is that of the Greeks whose dominant aspect of culture was art and within Medieval Christendom was religion and within the 'modern' world, it is philosophy, art and religion. He ranks the five arts, architecture at the bottom, then sculpture, painting, music and at the top, poetry. This hierarchy is based on the diminishing need for material and space that each of these takes. The development of human understanding consists in a move from art to philosophy so it is easy to see why Hegel believes that modern art is dead. Only if we find a new art medium that does not involve these materials then it could continue this theory.

2. What is the difference between art and propaganda?

Most art contains messages that the artists wishes to convey across. But there needs to be a clear distinction between art and propaganda. The aim of propaganda is to secure belief and assent and it is very good at doing that through various media attributes such as words, images, film, sequences, narrative structures and music. Each of these pieces of media are very effective in conveying and affirming that message which makes a very powerful impact.

Art must do more that convey and assert a message in the way that propaganda does. Like other knowledge such as history, science and philosophy, art must secure belief through understanding. The claim that we learn from art is not that paintings, poems and plays can provide us with information or opinions in attractive ways but they help in our understanding by enhancing that information.

3. Give two arguments supporting aesthetic cognitivism.

The first argument is that art does enrich human understanding, which explains why it is easy to understand the place of art in our culture. It plays a major role in schools and universities and it's easy to see why. The purpose of educations is to develop and increase understanding and art is one form of this understanding meaning that art belongs as part of educations. More attention and resources are given to art that amusement or sport but that makes perfect sense given the positive impact that it has.

Secondly, cognitivism can help us understand someone's lifetime commitment to art as a painter, poet or 

composer. We must see this commitment to art as the artist's pursuit of pleasure. We must also see 

expressivism as an amateur just wallowing in emotion turbulence. This dedication to art, much like the same 

dedication to science can can be understood by the Delphic ideal 'Man, know thyself!'

4. Give two problematic aspects associated with aesthetic cognitivism.

We understand science generally but we are not just confined to natural sciences but are instead taking aboard the huge variety of different subjects such as mathematics, economics, philosophy, astronomy, physics, chemistry and biology etc. One way of characterizing these subjects is as a movement of thought. Moving from an established basis towards a potential conclusion using logic or a set rule of reasoning. The terminology for this often different between subjects but all of the share the same structure. In art however there is no structure or conclusion which lead us to see that works of art are done using imagination which stem from the artists mind which is very different from the sciences.

Again, looking at sciences and how they draw conclusions through experiments and working thoughts. These explanations that they arrive at can help you understand better but the same does not happen with art, each piece is different and unique and the same feeling or conclusion cannot be replicated into another piece of art, even a small difference can completely change the meaning or lose the meaning of the piece altogether. 

5.  How can a work of art enhance our experience? Give a brief answer.

We have many different experiences in life such as science, maths and sport. They are all the same whereas a work of art is a piece of imagination of the artist and therefore the opinion and taste will differ from person to person. This enhanced our experiences of the world by the way in which we use our imagination and being able to see the world differently.