Nick Zangwill ROCKS AND SUNSETS: A DEFENCE OF IGNORANT PLEASURES

1. How much do we have to know about what we evaluate? Many aestheticians say that all or most aesthetic evaluations of artworks and natural things require that we know not just about its immediately perceivable aspects but also about its history or deeper nature or wider role. I agree that quite a lot of aesthetic evaluation is like this. But I also think that much is not. Much of our aesthetic life is a matter of a relatively uninformed aesthetic appreciation of what is immediately given in our perceptual experience of a thing, where that appreciation and experience is not informed by knowledge of its history or deeper nature or wider role. Much appreciation is relatively innocent. I disagree with those who deny the actuality or validity of this kind of appreciation. This is the crux of the formalism/anti-formalism debate in aesthetics. To be sure, the various debates that deploy the label formalism vary in dierent areas music, painting, architecture, literature etc but I think that there is a fairly common concern across most areas where issues are discussed under that label. Unfortunately, it is not easy to capture all the debates in a unied theoretical statement. The most natural proposal would be to say that formal aesthetic qualities are those that depend on what is immediately perceivable in things; but then we face the diculty of saying what immediate as opposed to mediate perception is. It will suce for our purposes to proceed with a negative disjunctive characterization, according to which formal aesthetic evaluations are those that we can make without knowing the history or deeper nature or wider role of the things being evaluated. By contrast non-formal aesthetic evaluation does require such knowledge of what we are evaluating. This characterization allows us to dene a contentful and useful debate, which maps onto many familiar debates that have gone under the label formalism. Extreme formalists say that all or most aesthetic evaluation is formal. For example, Clive Bell and Roger Fry argued for this early in the Twentieth Century (Bell 1913, Fry 1918). Anti-formalists say that all or most aesthetic evaluation is non-formal. For example, Kendall Walton has argued this in philosophy (Walton 1970), and Ernst Gombrich argued for this in art history (Gombrich 1959). Anti-formalism is the current consensus. In general, my view lies between these two extremes.
Rivista di estetica, n.s., 29 (2 / 2005), XLV, pp. 53-59 Rosenberg & Sellier

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I call it moderate formalism, and it is the view that there is much of both sorts of evaluations, and many artworks and natural things have signicant aesthetic features of both kinds (Zangwill 2001: chapters 4-8). In much of the aesthetics of art and nature, both have a place. Much aesthetic evaluation is informed by knowledge of a things history or deeper nature or wider role; and much is not. Jolly reasonable, I would have thought! 2. In the last 25 years Allen Carlson has argued for anti-formalism about the aesthetic properties of nature, following the lead of Ronald Hepburn in his extraordinary 1965 essay (Hepburn 1965, Carlson 2000). Hepburn and Carlson argue that we should always appreciate natural things in the light of knowledge of their history or deeper nature or wider ecological role. In the case of aesthetic judgements about living things, I agree that we often have to understand what biological kinds of things they are, and the biological role of their parts, if we are to evaluate them aesthetically. This means knowing about their history. This is because the biological kinds that living things or their parts fall under is a matter of their biological functions; and biological functions are historically determined. A creature that materializes after lightning strikes in a swamp has no historically given biological nature and its parts have no functions (Millikan 1993); and if so it has no aesthetic qualities that depend on functions. In the case of living things, I seek moderate middle ground between formalism and anti-formalism. I think that living things have formal beauty such as that of a peacocks feathers or a butterys wings which depends on how the thing is in narrow immediately perceivable respects, and which does not depend on its history or biological kind or ecological role. But I also think that they have non-formal beauty, where history matters because the thing is beautiful as the kind of biological thing that it is. With living nature I seek compromise, arbitration, toleration, open-mindedness. I am a man of peace, urging the extremists on both sides to reject their rejectionism of the other side. In the aesthetics of inorganic nature, by contrast, I am a man of war. I am an extremist. I reject compromise. My view is: (1) we need not and should not consider the beauty of inorganic natural things or their parts in the light of their histories; (2) we need not and should not consider the beauty of inorganic natural things in the light of knowledge of their deeper chemical composition, where that is inaccessible to ordinary perception; and (3) we need not and should not consider the beauty of inorganic natural things in the light of knowledge of their causal role in some ecosystem (Carlson 2001, Parsons 2004). The beauty of inorganic nature is independent of all that. Extreme formalists about inorganic nature say that an inorganic thing would have had the aesthetic features that it actually has even if it had only come into existence ve minutes ago, even if it were dierent in its chemical structure, and even if it had a dierent ecological role. For the anti-formalist, the history or deeper nature or ecological role of inorganic things always or almost always matters; it makes a dierence to their beauty. For the moderate formalist, it often does and it often doesnt. By contrast, for the extreme formalist, the history or deeper nature or ecological role of an inorganic thing makes no aesthetic dierence. Hence sophisticated knowledge
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of an inorganic things history or deeper chemical nature or ecological role is never relevant to an aesthetic judgement about it. For example, with rocks and sunsets, sophistication is an error, and philistinism is a virtue. As far as our appreciation of the beauty of inorganic nature is concerned, ignorance of history and chemistry and ecology is bliss! 3. Thats my view. But how do we argue about the issue? The most common approach is to appeal to examples. However, this is often disappointing, since the interpretation of possible and actual examples is often theory-dependent. Anti-formalists tend to give examples of actual or possible things that are very similar in intrinsic respects but have dierent histories or deeper natures or ecological roles; and they want us to have the intuition that the things dier aesthetically. But it is usually not too dicult to reject the pressure in these cases. There is a formalist way of construing the examples. One can deny that there is an aesthetic dierence. Consider, for example, a real lake and a very similar articial lake. Is it obvious that they dier aesthetically? They might dier in nonaesthetic respects, perhaps. The real lake might have nonaesthetic values that the articial lake lacks. And our enjoyment of each may dier. But there are many kinds of pleasures: some are aesthetic while others are not. Kant has the example of listening to what we thought was a nightingale and then discovering that it was all along a rogue in the bushes with a whistle (Kant 1928: section 16). Of course something changes. But what? It is notable in this case that we feel cheated. And even if no one deliberately deceived us and we were somehow taken in by some piece of plumbing that produced nightingale-like sounds as a by-product of its plumbing role, we would still feel that our experience was somehow a lie, a fraud, a deception or an illusion. These ideas, however, seem more like moral or epistemological ones than aesthetic ones. So perhaps there is no aesthetic change. At least, that is what the formalist will say. The antiformalist will obviously disagree. But it is obvious that it is not obvious what the correct description of such cases is. It is clearly unclear. The anti-formalist characterization of the examples is incorrect from the formalist point of view, and vice versa. Thus the examples lack dialectical force. The notion of the aesthetic is common currency in the debate, and quite a lot of weight is resting on it. So the notion needs special care and attention. The notion is a relatively malleable one and it can be dened and rened in various ways. The philosophical task is to nd or fashion a useful notion. Appealing to pleasure will not quite do it since pleasures divide into aesthetic and nonaesthetic pleasures. My view is that the notion is best dened in terms of beauty and ugliness: aesthetic pleasure is pleasure in beauty (Zangwill 2001: chapters 1 and 2). This yields an interesting debate over nature. Thus, given some inorganic natural thing that we are experiencing, the question is not: given the added information about inorganic nature, should our pleasures change? Perhaps they should. But: given information about inorganic nature, should our evaluations of beauty and ugliness change? I say no whereas my adversary says yes. This debate, at least, has an interesting content. Interesting content it may have, easy resolution not! Thus far we have a stando. Formalists dispute the examples that anti-formalists present as favouring
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their analysis. Formalists give formalist interpretations and dispute anti-formalist interpretations. We can see how formalists defend themselves against the appeal to doppelgnger examples, which is by far the most common anti-formalism kind of argument. But to prevent ones opponent scoring a goal is not to score a goal oneself. So, at half time, as it were, we have a draw. 4. How, then, can extreme formalists go further and argue that both antiformalists and moderate formalists over-intellectualize our aesthetic appreciation of inorganic nature? Like anti-formalists, I appeal to examples. You may worry that my interpretation of the examples that I shall give will be found questionbegging by those I want to persuade, and thus my examples will be as dialectically ineective as the anti-formalists. However, the examples I shall adduce are not philosophers fanciful thought experiments or unusual actual cases, but common actual examples. I shall try to show that anti-formalism and moderate formalism are not true to much of our actual aesthetic lives. Thus I hope that the examples succeed in having dialectical weight. I presume that anti-formalists and moderate formalists do not see themselves as radical reformers who hold that our ordinary aesthetic lives are systematically in error. It is possible that some anti-formalists see themselves as describing how we ought to experience nature, not how we do experience nature. I assume, however, that this is not their view. I will argue from how we often experience inorganic nature, where we refers to most people. I shall be happy if I can pressure anti-formalists and moderate formalists to admit that they are committed to convicting many people of a systematic error. That would yield an honestly reformist view. I shall describe our actual aesthetic lives and assume that there is a normative presumption in favour of that. 5. I oer two examples: rocks and sunsets. And I shall appeal to an aspect of our ordinary aesthetic experience of rocks and sunsets that I think favour extreme formalism over both moderate formalism and anti-formalism. This is the fact that we are often happy to be ignorant of many aspects of what we experience and judge. I want to celebrate ignorance! When we appreciate rocks aesthetically, the fact is that most of us just dont know what kind of rock we are looking at. This shows that when we appreciate rocks, that appreciation does not depend on knowledge of their history or deeper chemical nature. Rocks can be igneous, formed of molten lava. They can also be sedimentary, formed by the deposit of the shells of millions of sea-creatures. Thats a huge dierence in their history and current nature. But most of those who admire rocks dont know about these matters. Should they know whether rocks are igneous or sedimentary when appreciating their beauty? The scientic story is interesting, no doubt. But I think it has no bearing on our aesthetic appreciation of them. I am thinking of the beauties of the Stone Forrest, near Kunming in China, or of the beauties of Cappadocia in Turkey (where Pasolini shot his lm Medea, one of his masterpieces). I have no idea what those rocks are made of and I have no idea about their history. And I am far from alone. Many are as ignorant as I. Are anti-formalists really going to tell us that we are wrong to have the aesthetic pleasures we do? And are moderate formalists really going
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to tell us that we are wrong to restrict ourselves solely to these comparatively supercial aesthetic pleasures? What exactly are sunsets? I confess, I dont know. Do you know? Do we need to know in order to appreciate their beauty? And if we do know, does that enhance our appreciation of their beauty? I dont think so. You might tell me about the science of sunsets. I will say Thats interesting. I will listen politely for a while. But if you go on for long, I will ask you to leave me alone and let me enjoy the sunset! Eventually I will plead with you to stop! Suppose you tell me that pollution has enhanced some sunset, making it more vivid and dramatic than it would otherwise have been. If I know this, I may form a moral or political judgement. But would that or should that make me nd the sunset less beautiful? I dont think so. Both science and morality are irrelevant to the beauty of sunsets. 6. I have said how it is with me, and how it is with most people. Very occasionally I have met people who claim that their knowledge of the history or deeper nature or wider role of inorganic things does inform their aesthetic appreciation. And if so the dialectic will run into the sand with them. But as a matter of sociological fact, such people are a tiny minority. For the rest of us, at least, anti-formalism is an aront to our ordinary ignorant aesthetic pleasures in rocks and sunsets. Moderate formalism is also an aront, since it implies that however ne our experience of rocks and sunsets is, there is a great deal more, aesthetically, to be had. But most of us think that our simple ignorant aesthetic experience is the experience of all the beauty that there is. We admit that there are connoisseurs of paintings, who have knowledge that puts them in a position to know more of the beauties of paintings than we know when we perceive the same paintings that they do. For we know that paintings are complex representational objects and we must grasp what they represent to appreciate them properly. However, we would not admit that there are connoisseurs of the beauty of inorganic nature, who have knowledge that puts them in a position to know more of its beauties than we do when we perceive the same things that they do. A few unusual people claim that they have dierent aesthetic pleasures in rocks and sunsets depending on their scientic beliefs, but I am sceptical of their description of themselves. I suppose it is just about conceivable that there really is an extra aesthetic dimension out there, and that I and most others are missing out on it. But my appeal is to our actual aesthetic lives, which neither anti-formalists nor moderate formalists describe. And if they want to criticise it, my sympathies lie with the poor suering victims of such revolutionary zeal! 7. A qualication: of course, the aesthetic appreciation of rocks and sunsets is often causally aected by knowledge of many kinds. The same is true of nonaesthetic pleasures. Finding out that the wine one is drinking is from ones favourite holiday destination or that a meal one is eating is made of ones pet dog would probably make a dierence to our pleasures. And in a similar way, our aesthetic pleasures in inorganic nature can be aected by all sorts of knowledge. But that does mean that knowledge of such matters as history or deeper nature or wider role can enhance aesthetic appreciation in the sense that we nd things beautiful as things with that history or deeper nature or wider role. Such knowledge
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can causally inhibit our aesthetic pleasures, as in the polluted sunset case. But even where there is such an aect, the aesthetic pleasure (or displeasure) is not pleasure taken in something with those properties. The knowledge may aect, but it cannot not inform, our aesthetic responses, in the sense in which pleasure in a representational painting is informed by what we think the painting represents and in the way we think it represents it (Zangwill 2001: chapter 4). A corollary is that although there can be connoisseurs of inorganic nature in the same sense in which there can be wine connoisseurs where connoisseurs are those who are practiced and widely experienced such connoisseurs of wine or inorganic nature are not bringing to bear knowledge of the history or deeper nature or role of what is experienced such that it not only aects their pleasure but also informs it. 8. I conclude that extreme formalism is true of our experience of the beauty of inorganic nature. I dont know much about rocks and sunsets. And most people who appreciate the beauty of these things are as ignorant as I. Are we shamefully remiss in having these ignorant aesthetic pleasures? Surely not. We have extensive and intense ignorant pleasure in rocks and sunsets. This is very common. Our aesthetic pleasure is very often not accompanied by sophisticated knowledge of the sort that anti-formalists have in mind. Anti-formalism, therefore, is an assault on our actual aesthetic lives. Moderate formalism is also an assault of a dierent sort, for it critiques us for being pitifully limited. There is, they say, a world of aesthetic value out there that we are missing out on. I dont believe it. The values, if such they are, that the sophisticated and informed people appreciate are not aesthetic values. That is, they are not part of the beauty (or ugliness) of rocks or sunsets. Sophisticated information about the history or deeper nature or ecological role of rocks and sunsets may give us intellectual pleasure in perceiving them, but not aesthetic pleasure that is, pleasure in beauty. I dont believe in these supposed higher aesthetic pleasures. Finding out more about inorganic nature may make it more interesting to perceive, but not more beautiful. Our common aesthetic appreciation of inorganic nature is formal appreciation and there is nothing aesthetic that the ignorant appreciator is missing. Ignorant pleasure in the beauty of inorganic nature is not merely legitimate and important but all there is1.

1 A version of this paper was given as a talk at the British School of Rome in the summer of 2004. I am very grateful indeed to the organizers for the invitation and the congenial and beautiful context in which to think about these matters. Also, very many thanks to Allen Carlson for insightful and helpful comments.

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References
Carlson, A., 2000, Aesthetics and the Environment, London, Routledge. 2001, On Aesthetically Appreciating Human Environments, Philosophy and Geography, 4. Bell, C., 1913, Art, London, Chatto and Windus. Fry, R., 1918, Transformations, London, Chatto and Windus. Gombrich, E., 1959, Art and Illusion, London, Phaidon. Hepburn, R., 1965, Contemporary Aesthetic and the Neglect of Natural Beauty, reprinted in Wonder and Others Essays, Edinburgh University Press, 1984. Kant, I., 1928, Critique of Judgement, transl. Meredith, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Millikan, R., 1993, White Queen Psychology and Other Essays for Alice, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press. Parsons, G., 2004, Natural Functions and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Inorganic Nature, British Journal of Aesthetics, 44. Walton, K., 1970, Categories of Art, Philosophical Review, 79. Zangwill, N., 2001, The Metaphysics of Beauty, Ithaca, Cornell University Press,

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