The Arts and the Definition of the Human: Toward a Philosophical Anthropology

200 Pages·2008·4.89 MB·English

by  Joseph Margolis

The Arts and the Definition of the Human

The Arts and the Definition of the Human
Toward a Philosophical Anthropology
Joseph Margolis
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
© 2009 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission
of Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Margolis, Joseph, 1924–
The arts and the definition of the human : toward a philosophical anthropology
/ Joseph Margolis.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8047-5953-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8047-5954-0 (pbk.
: alk. paper)
1. Painting—Philosophy. 2. Art—Philosophy. 3. Visual perception. 4. Aes-
thetics. 5. Philosophical anthropology. I. Title.
ND1140.M338 2009
750—dc22
2008018850
Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 11/13.5 Adobe Garamond
for Coco,
amazed together

Contents
Preface ix
Prologue: The Definition of the Human 1
1 Perceiving Paintings as Paintings 29
2 “One and Only One Correct Interpretation” 71
3 Toward a Phenomenology of Painting
and Literature 97
4 “Seeing-in,” “Make-Believe,” “Transfiguration”:
The Perception of Pictorial Representation 123
Epilogue: Beauty, Truth, and the
Passing of Transcendental Philosophy 145
Notes 161
Index 179

Preface
A young frienD of Mine who lives and works in Madrid and who
knows my published views very thoroughly recently sent me the draft of a
longish paper of his in which, rather generously, he reviews some themes of
mine, featuring in particular my having said that although Homo sapiens is
a “natural-kind” kind, human beings—human selves—really have no na-
ture, are no more than artifacts, histories, hybrids of biology and culture,
the sites of certain transformed powers peculiar to human possibility. That
single idea is as close to the pivot of my best intuition as anything I can
think of. It was indeed the unmarked focus of a book my young friend had
reviewed, as well as the somewhat more explicit but still decentered focus
of the book before you now, a notion translated into the puzzles of the art
world, very far removed in an academic sense—but not really—from the
moral/political topics of the earlier book.
I can’t say that I’ve chosen this conception of the self for my own; it’s
nearer the truth to confess that it’s captured me, as I imagine will be clear
enough when you read on. It’s been shaping my thought over the span of
an entire career, deployed I realize in every philosophical niche that has
caught my interest. So that now it’s a broadly unified conception, still
somewhat elusive, which, though hardly orthodox, I’ve tried to demon-
strate is a most resourceful replacement for many a canonical philosophy
able to command a sizable fiefdom.
I’ve been at these inquiries too long to be unaware of my direction.
I’ve been retracing my steps back from the distinctive compartmentaliza-
tions of philosophical topics that hold sway in our time and that have put
ix