Second in a series
Recently a friend of mine, who is an art critic, mentioned to me that he thought the experience of art is a subjective experience. I immediately disagreed. His use of the word “subjective” set off a train of thoughts in my mind.
Usually, when we describe an experience as subjective, we mean to suggest that it lacks objectivity. The word “subjective” often implies arbitrary, an attitude not based on what is real, something that is not factual. Since I heard my friend’s comment, I have been thinking about what I mean when I use the words subjective or objective to describe an experience.
I decided to share my thoughts with readers of this column, hoping I might stimulate some serious reflection on the value and importance of art, especially great art. I am hoping that I can state my view clearly.
I think that all knowing is both subjective and objective. By subjective, I mean personal. All knowing is done by persons. By objective, I mean of another, or of other. The other might be an object of nature such as a tree, or an academic subject like physics or chemistry. The other might be literature, poetry or film. The other might be a human person. In fact, the other might be oneself as when we reflect on ourselves.
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Whatever the other, the knowing person should try to be as objective as possible, should try to know the other as it really is. The knower should guard against allowing emotion or passion to distort his or her knowing. There are some realities that demand strong attention and even endurance to be known. Some can even require a kind of asceticism.
Some objects are more difficult to know than others, but my view is that all of them are equally subjective and objective. Some objects may be clearer or more easily known than others, but that does not mean that the knowing is less subjective or more objective.
So I suggest that physics, while more clear than poetry, is just as subjective and objective as poetry. Though chemistry may be clearer than philosophy, that does not mean that it is less subjective or more objective than philosophy. Knowing literature may be more or less difficult than knowing biology, but it is not less objective or more subjective than biology.
Created Realities Resemble God
I believe that trying to understand a work of art, especially a great work of art, presents special problems, but also may offer special blessings. All created realities resemble God in some way. God cannot create any reality that does not imitate God. As soon as the created reality comes into existence, it is good, true and beautiful because it shares in God’s being. Great mountains and rivers resemble God in some way, but so do tarantulas and cockroaches.
In creating a work of art, an artist imitates God the Creator. Great artists capture something of God’s truth, goodness and beauty and offer their creations to us for our enrichment. I believe that this is what great artists do even if they do not believe in God.
The creations of great artists may be very demanding. It may take some time before we can come to appreciate the work of some geniuses. When I first saw some films by writer/director, Ingmar Bergman, whom I consider the greatest artist in the history of cinema, I could neither understand nor appreciate the films. I now think that any time I spent studying his films was greatly rewarded.
The Sacred and The Beautiful
In his book, “What Is God? How to Think About the Divine (New York: Paulist Press, 1986, pp. 143) John Haught, commenting on the distinction between religious and aesthetic or beautiful art, which is not obviously religious, writes the following:
“To many individuals for whom the ‘sacred’ means nothing at all the ‘beautiful’ means a great deal. Therefore some distinction must be made between ‘the sacred’ and ‘the beautiful.’
“But can we so neatly set one experience apart from the other? I am uncomfortable with too sharp a distinction between aesthetic and religious experience. To segregate them too crisply seems artificial and out of touch with what actually happens in our encounter with the beauty of reality. For if we carefully ponder what is involved in the experience of concrete beauty, we may think of it as continuous with our encountering the divine.”
I agree completely with Haught. Father Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. expressed the profound truth succinctly: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” There is no time nor place from which it is absent.
Father Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica, and author of “Pope Francis’ Profound Personalism and Poverty” (Resurrectioan Press).