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The Aesthetics of Organicism
parently real beauty is properly judged to be an apparently real beauty. Disagreements also enter the picture, leaving the field forever open to controversies about in how far beauty may be said to be real, both in general and, more commonly, with regard to specific objective details.
ART
Art is anything man-made; fine art is art intended, by either maker or appreciator, to be capable of producing experiences of beauty or ugliness under suitable circumstances. Thus art involves instruments and control of instruments which may serve as instrumental values yielding intrinsic values. Fine art involves intention to make or modify some instrument, the making ("creative") activity, the instrument made or modified, and appreciation (i.e., intuition of intrinsic value, beauty, or disvalue, ugliness), even if only by the maker. The instrument need not be external to one's own body, for deliberate variations in one's vocal cords used in singing suffice to constitute an art instrument.
as
Is imaginary art art? Is a soprano, imagining a new melody without vocalizing it, being artistic? Is dream art art? Are the aesthetic experiences produced intentionally by hallucinogens, such opium, mescalin, or LSD, properly called art? Yes. Such art is purely private, of course, and purely private art is not public art; but, as in the case of different kinds of public art, such as symphonic music and sculpture, each is to be judged by standards relevant to the peculiarities of its particular nature and circumstances. Organicism agrees with Croce in asserting that art exists, in a minimal sense, in imagination, but also with John Dewey in asserting that art exists more fully in a created work of art being appreciated by an audience. It is a mistake to judge imaginary art as equivalent to publically actualized art, just as it is a mistake to equate sculpture and music. Thus, for Organicism, not merely beauty but also art may be wholly subjective in the sense
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that imaginary existence is sufficient for its existence. On the other hand, as noted previously, beauty, as well as art, may be judged to be as if real, where pragmatic agreement supports sustained inferences. Both beauty and art may exist anywhere on a polar range between extremes of subjectivity and apparent reality. But the great bulk of what is commonly called art is of a publicly appreciable sort. And artists, aestheticians, and art critics properly focus their attentions primarily upon
these.
Having mentioned Croce with approval, I hasten to express disagreement also, when he says that "... art cannot be a utilitarian act; and since a utilitarian act aims always at obtaining a pleasure and therefore at keeping off a pain, art, considered in its own nature, has nothing to do with the useful and with pleasure and pain, as such." 15 Rather, art cannot exist without some instrument, for even imagination itself functions instrumentally in the creation of imaginary art, and an instrument is nothing if not useful, potentially at least, in the production of enjoyed intrinsic values. Organicism, in extending the range of intrinsic values to include enthusiasms, satisfactions, and contentments, as well as pleasures, identifies art with intentional, hènce instrumental, production of enjoyments of these as such, even though most cases of such enjoyments are embedded aspectivally in contexts. Furthermore, richly intricate since art is intentional, I must disagree with Croce when Croce says that art "does not arise as an act of the will." 16 Although artistic creativity and appreciation need not always involve moral action, most of it does, as we shall see below. And, although not all art experience involves conceptual knowledge, most of it does involve concepts; and some art is intended to express
truth.
Edward Bullough's important contribution of the idea of psychical distance refers to something which can be explained better in terms of my distinction between aesthetic experience and moral experience.
Experience is "aesthetic" when it is enjoyed as
