[C] [Wittrs] Re: criticizing Wittgenstein
- From: J DeMouy <jpdemouy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:02:13 -0800 (PST)
Sean,
I find the use of comparisons of Wittgenstein with "God", talk of "higher" and
"lower" planes and of giants and "Lilliputians", and similar metaphors to be
counterproductive. (I do not say "incorrect"!) It is (unnecessarily?)
contentious and potentially invidious to put things in these terms, amking them
quite unhelpful in the present context and potentially even harmful in the
wider discussion.
I'm not (obviously) not above saying contentious and even invidious things
(quite gratuitously sometimes!) but I wonder if your points could be salvaged
from these problems?
Why am I bothering if I don't think what you're saying is actually incorrect?
That Wittgensteinians pass off hagiography as genuine scholarship or that we
are a cult of blind hero-worship with no relevance to the mainstream of
philosophy are common enough accusations. And of course, people who say that
sort of thing are liable to do so whatever we do. But why make it easy for
them?
And why say things that would seem to the curious onlooker to confirm that
propaganda?
What follows is a statement of my own take on these matters, where my views
seem to mesh with your own. If they do not, I welcome clarification.
There are more and less serious ways of appreciating paintings. And by
"serious", I do not mean to suggest that the appreciation of a dilettante is
any less sincere, any less genuine. But for someone who has immersed herself
in an epoch, assimilated its systems of representation, its norms of
expression, its design sensibilities, its precedents, its paradigms, a
painter's work is a record of a way of seeing, of deliberate decisions, of
problems and solutions. She can recognize better and worse specimens of works
belonging to the style. She can identify innovative and banal solutions to the
problems of representation and design belonging to such works. And she can
recognize mistakes.
But this sort of insight does not always translate into a similar appreciation
of work from another period. In fact, where her dilettante friend may readily
find beauty in Rubens as well as Raphael, she may see only excess, ugliness,
thoughtlessness, and chaos in Rubens.
She could learn as well to see Baroque paintings as they should be seen. Or
perhaps to "switch off" her finely cultivated judgment where it does not apply,
so that she can at least enjoy Rubens as her less erudite friend does.
But what about Cezanne? There is a reason that he is often called "the
painter's painter" (as Wittgenstein is "the philosopher's philosopher").
Cezanne's work doesn't fit into previously existing conceptions of painting,
not even Impressionism. Cezanne seems to be struggling with something more
fundamental than a style and its problems, something like, "What is this
business of applying colored material to a two-dimensional substrate to
'represent' reality?" And he doesn't reject the idea, as many later painters
would do, but he struggles with it in various ways. And it requires the same
questioning from us to understand what he's doing, why he breaks so many
"rules".
Understanding Cezanne requires understanding his problems. And this starts
from understanding - or perhaps taking on trust - that his "mistakes" are no
such thing.
Or rather: it is difficult to imagine, once we know not to try to judge him
according to the prevailing style of a period, what we should count as a
"mistake".
This is not to say that Cezanne is "higher" than us or "higher" than Rubens or
Raphael. Only that seriousness requires we show care in what assumptions and
expectations we bring to each.
Now, philosophy is not painting. Nor yet music. Such analogies can be easily
strained past the point of breaking. But something like this captures some of
the difficulty with which Wittgenstein's works present us.
JPDeMouy
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