Miller is much better here. He is more interesting and smarter because he raises questions from the content instead of attaching his (usually pejorative) judgments up front.
I've always liked Weitz because he seemed to explain Wittgenstein (in terms of art) better than others. But I need to agree that just because "a family resemblance" cannot be pinned down to an explicit common feature or concept does not mean that the concept has already been fully examined or defined. We can't sidestep the issue by saying there are open and closed concepts. We can't be sure that a concept is closed but we are always right when we say a concept is open. I agree that nothing (in art) has been fully explicated. I turn again to a master of such thinking among artists, E. Delacroix: "That which has been done has not yet been done enough". So why not just admit that the art concept is always open? Why not admit that the "family resemblance" is always an evolving one -- like nature, remoter genes are reduced to near zero, if not zero, and newer ones seem all new -- or as with metamorphosis, a real change occurs. One can imagine a cluster of "closed concepts" within an ever expanding "open concept". Follow nature. Here's another quote from Renoir: "Take your theories (of art) to Nature and she knocks them all flat". wc ________________________________ From: Chris Miller <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Thursday, October 8, 2009 8:55:40 AM Subject: Reading Kivy: Chapter Two - Wittgenstein and Weitz "A concept is open if its conditions of application are emendable and corrigable; i.e. if a situation or case can be imagined or secured which would call for some sort of decision on our part to extend the use of the concept to cover this, or to close the concept and invent a new one to deal with the new case and its new property. If necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of a concept can be stated, the concept is a closed one" (Morris Weitz - following Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations") ""Art" is an open concept . New conditions (cases) have constantly arisen and will undoubtedly arise; new art forms, new movements will emerge, which will demand decisions on the part of those interested, usually professional critics, as to whether the concept should be extended or not" (Morris Weitz) "The primary task of aesthetics is not to seek a theory but to elucidate the concept of art. Specifically, it is to describe the conditions under which we employ the concept correctly. Definitions, reconstruction, patterns of analysis are out of place here since they distort and add nothing to our understanding of art" (Morris Weitz) .................. ........ Kivy first notes that Weitz has not clarified whether his claim is epistemic (what we know) or ontological (what really is) I.e, "it might well be that we tell whether something is a work of art by noting family resemblances (the epistemic claim) even though, in fact, what makes it a work of art is some (unknown) property common to all artworks (the ontological claim)" Kivy suggest that Weitz has acknowledged this oversight, but In either case, the Wittgensteinian student of aesthetics will be "looking for the elusive common property" - "noting family resemblances to paradigm cases" to continually modify the cluster concept being assembled. And then Kivy, with no further explanation, suggests "my advice to the Wittgensteinian, then, would be the same as to the traditional theorists: give resemblance a rest. My theme is differences" Perhaps realizing that this advice is a bit irrelevant, Kivy then launches into a sharper attack -- noting that "The Wittgensteinian move in the philosophy of art was never a popular one, and at the present it is not a going concern" Unfortunately, as with his dismissal of Schopenhauer, Kivy seems to once again accept that the popular reception of a philosophy as the final word on its value. But to apply the coup de grace, he finally adds "There is a simpler, less philosophically expansive reason why I reject the Wittgensteinian model for art. It is simply that the only argument for its being a proper model is a bad argument" And that "bad argument" is that any traditional definition "forecloses on the very conditions of creativity in the arts" Why is this a bad argument? Because "even if (say) representation were a necessary condition for an art, it could hardly foreclose on "originality" or "creativity", since both (and I assume that they are not synonymous) can be exhibited with the constraints of representation and, as far as I can tell, can continue to be exhibited ad infinitum: there are infinite changes to be rung on the theme of "representation"" (BTW - those who claim that representation has already accomplished all that it ever could would not agree with this assertion -- but I do - and I would take it even further, and say that originality and creativity can be exhibited ad infinitum within every specific style: Impressionism, Chinese landscape, Russian icons, etc) Kivy then notes that Weitz , possibly realizing that he goofed, has somewhat retreated from his "bad argument" by dropping the word "creativity" from his subsequent statement in 1977: "My argument against theories of art was (and is) that any attempt to state definite criteria for a concept whose use has depended on and continues to depend, not on its having such a set, but rather on its being able, for its correct use, to accomomodate new criteria that are derived, or derivable, from new art forms whose features demand amendation, rejection, or expansion of extant criteria" But what is wrong with this more recent version? Kivy accuses Weitz of simply repackaging his notion of "creativity" as "new criteria" -- but the new wording works, doesn't it? At this point, Kivy's only complaint is that Weitz has failed to prove that "radical creativity (i.e. new criteria) cannot be accommodated by the traditional common-property necessary-and-sufficient-condition model" Which is a rather weak argument, since the Wittgenstieinian model can be based on nothing more than the observation that the common property has yet to be found. So, although Kivy has caught Weitz in a few mis-steps, I don't think he has sunk Wittgenstein - unless it is sufficient to note that he is no longer very popular. ____________________________________________________________ Weight Loss Program Best Weight Loss Program - Click Here! http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2231/c?cp=JEwE3uZbkUz_SZ3NyuGhMQAAJz6c l_zTaptgNR5c8Mer1v9kAAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEUgAAAAA=
