Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 7 Number 3, December 2006
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Loesberg,
Jonathan, A
Return to Aesthetics: Autonomy, Indifference, and Postmodernism,
Stanford University Press, 2005, 304 pages, ISBN 0804751161,
$18,96 (Paperback)
Reviewed by
Centre for Art and New Technologies in Prague (CIANT)
A return to aesthetics
offers a fresh and interesting approach to the classical concepts of the
aesthetic theory, namely autonomous form, disinterest, and symbolic embodiment,
as well as to the postmodern critique of aesthetics and of the Enlightenment.
This rereading of the history of aesthetics shows how the classical key concepts
were misunderstood as symptoms of the Enlightenment ideas of reason and justice
and how they still play a very important role in contemporary postmodern
philosophy.
The book identifies two main anti-aesthetic tendencies of today. Both of
these tendencies try to show that the aesthetic categories are contingent rather
than universal and that they are simply a version of the Enlightenment ideas of
reason and justice. The first anti-aesthetic tendency criticizing the
universalistic tone of the aesthetic categories comes from literary studies
field and postmodern philosophy and is represented by thinkers like Jacques
Derrida, Paul de Man or Michel Foucault. The second, “ideological” critique
of aesthetics, interprets its categories as a socially based constructions that
were simultaneously developed with certain ideas of economic values and with the
rise of a certain class. This position is best presented by Bourdieu.
Loesberg paradoxically traces back the conditions of possibility of these
two anti-aesthetic positions in the aesthetic concepts and discussions of the 18th
century which gave rise to the idea of “purposiveness without purpose“. The
position of “purposiveness without purpose“ offers original solution to
aesthetic discussions between epistemology and ontology, and actually presents a
mode of writing and critique that is typical of postmodern philosophy. Loesberg
shows that the aesthetic criteria of autonomous form (purposiveness without
purpose), disinterest (indifference) and embodiment were not necessarily
connected to the Enlightenment concepts of reason and objective value but part
of the discussion that gave space to such ideas to appear in the first place.
Following many examples from discussion in natural theology and later in Kant
Loesberg shows how the aesthetic structures were even meant to stand apart form
the foundations of reason and value.
The aesthetic theory of the 18th century actually offers a
type of a “sceptical Enlightenment“ that suspends the questions of truth and
grounding, and makes them seem not important for the discussion of art and
aesthetic experience. The classical aesthetic concepts are in his interpretation
almost self deconstructive and they offer as a model how to understand the
status of postmodern argument. Aesthetics is to enlightenment what literary
language is to postmodern philosophy. When postmodern philosophy says that there
is nor universal reason nor justice, it simply performs the aesthetic position.
It is not knowledge nor ethical claim but a presentation of a way of
apprehending. The status of Foucault's discoursive formations and of power, or
habitus in case of Bourdieu, correspond to Kant`s description of apprehending
objects as having purposiveness without propose. Neither of them is only a
fictions or subjective constructions but a process of arranging details so that
we can see a new significance. They are versions of Kant's “intersubjective
assent“ which claims that it makes sense to see the world in this way and
brake down our normal modes of apprehending things.
For these reasons the return to the classical aesthetic concepts is very
challenging and offers a way how to evaluate art on its own terms rather than as
a disguised ideology. This is also the basis of how Loesberg’s return to
aesthetics differs from some other attempts. Loesberg`s version of the return
does not claim that there is a certain form of aesthetic experience that escapes
political ideology, that there is a very autonomous and psychological response
to certain type of artworks. He does not look for a special experience created
by art objects, because this is not really what the critiques are attacking.
Bourdieu, a main example of the ideological critique of art, does not say that
the taste for autonomous non-utilitarian art does not exist and that it is not
valuable, he just states that it is typical of upper classes, it serves
ideological ends, and finally it is limited only to certain people. His and
similar critiques reject there is a transcendental value attached to it that
escapes the historical and political struggle. The version of critique that
Loesberg offers within his book is not a try to make aesthetic forms
transcendental or unhistorical but rather to render them as a model of inquiry
similar to postmodern criticism.