Aristotle first articulated the law of non-contradiction: it states that two contradictory statements cannot both be true at the same time. P cannot be both P and non-P at the same time. Now, to Tolstoy:
Tolstoy maintains that for an object to be art, the artist must successfully communicate a a specific emotion to an observer. If this fails, it is not art. If this succeeds, it is art. This leads to a potential problem, however. If an object successfully conveys an emotion to one observer but not the other, what then can be said as far as the objects art status? It successfully conveyed an emotion, and is, ergo, art. But it also simultaneously failed to convey that specific emotion and is, thus, not art. So we are then presented with an object that is both art and not art at the same time.
Question? Would this scenario violate the law of non-contradiction? Is there a reading of Tolstoy that saves his theory from this objection? What ramifications does this hypothetical have for Tolstoy's theory of art? I and presupposing that this scenario is not altogether unlikely, but if you think it is, feel free to say so and back up your claim.
I responded to your post on my blog.
ReplyDeleteI would say that the situation you described above is about Tolstoy's argument that well-communicated art (perhaps interchangeable in his theory for "good art") is very infectious. Now, what happened in your scenario was discussed in class on Friday, and Johnson tried to make a mathematical expression explaining the situation, which in turn ended up turning infectiousness into a proportion of successful communications over the number of communications that were attempted, I.e. The number of times the work was viewed/heard.
ReplyDeleteWith this spirit I would argue that the art would need more viewers and more judgments before it's status can be declared either way.