Philosophical
theories are much more like good stories than scientific explanations.’ This
provocative remark comes from the paper ‘Linguistic Philosophy and Perception’
(1953) by Margaret Macdonald. Macdonald was a figure at the institutional heart
of British philosophy in the mid-20th century whose work, especially her views
on the nature of philosophy itself, deserves to be better known.
Early
proponents of the ‘analytic’ method in philosophy such as Bertrand Russell saw
good philosophy as science-like and were dismissive of philosophy that was
overly poetic or unscientific. Russell, for example, took issue with the French
philosopher Henri Bergson, who was something of a bête-noire for early analytic
philosophers. Bergson’s theorising (Russell thought) did not depend on argument
but rather on expressing ‘truths’, so-called, arrived at by introspection. As
Russell wrote in ‘The Philosophy of Bergson’ (1912):
“His
imaginative picture of the world, regarded as a poetic effort, is in the main
not capable of either proof or disproof. Shakespeare says life’s but a walking
shadow, Shelley says it is like a dome of many-colored glass, Bergson says it
is a shell which burst into parts that are again shells. If you like Bergson’s
image better, it is just as legitimate.”
Russell
places Bergson alongside William Shakespeare and Percy Bysshe Shelley and
worries that there is no objective measure of whose worldview is more accurate.
There’s no way of proving which is a better account of things, it’s simply a
matter of which ‘image’ you like best. In other words, there’s no attempt to
provide empirical evidence – evidence based on publicly observable data – in
support of these views. For Russell, this was enough to show that what Bergson
was doing was not really philosophy, at least not good philosophy, any more
than Shakespeare’s plays and Shelley’s poetry were.
Russell’s
view of what counts as good philosophy was not one that Macdonald shared. In
her 1953 paper, she embraces comparisons between philosophy and literature,
poetry and art. For Macdonald, philosophical theories are very much like
‘pictures’ or ‘stories’ and, perhaps even more controversially, she suggests
that philosophical debates often come down to ‘temperamental differences’. For
example, whether you are willing to believe (in accordance with thinkers like
René Descartes) that we have an immaterial soul will come down to more than
just the philosophical arguments you are presented with. Your view on this
matter, Macdonald thinks, will more likely be determined by your own personal
values, life experiences, religion and so on. In this way, she thinks,
temperamental differences account for many philosophical disagreements.
However,
unlike Bergson, Macdonald was not working in a different philosophical
tradition from Russell. She was, to all appearances at least, just as much a
part of analytic philosophy as he was. In fact, institutionally, she was at the
very centre of things. Macdonald studied at the University of London and her
PhD was supervised by Susan Stebbing, the first woman in Britain to be
appointed a full professor of philosophy. Along with Stebbing and others
including Gilbert Ryle, Macdonald helped found Analysis – the academic journal
of analytic philosophy – which she later edited after the Second World War. And
throughout the 1930s and ’50s, she published many articles in venues like the
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, the UK’s foremost philosophical
society, and was an active member of Cambridge University’s Moral Sciences
Club.
So what
happened? How did Macdonald end up with such a different view about what good
philosophy looks like from Russell’s? And, if Macdonald was right, what does
that imply about the value of philosophy?
The story
of Macdonald’s entry into philosophy is quite remarkable. She was born in 1903
into poverty to a single mother who later absconded to Australia, leaving her
baby behind to be fostered. Macdonald was ill throughout her childhood and
youth, suffering from tuberculosis (among other things), and supported by an
organisation called the National Children’s Home and Orphanage that later
helped pay for her undergraduate studies. As Michael Kremer notes, Macdonald’s
upbringing stands in stark contrast with many of the canonical figures in
20th-century philosophy such as Russell, who was born into British aristocracy
(his grandfather was an earl who was twice prime minister), Ludwig
Wittgenstein, a member of what was, historically, an extremely wealthy family
(his father Karl, an industrialist, was one of the richest men in Europe), or
Ryle, who spent his entire adult life easily moving through the ranks at the
University of Oxford.
Stebbing
was an important figure in Macdonald’s life, both personally and
professionally. Macdonald was one of a number of women who benefitted from
Stebbing’s supervision, along with Ruth Lydia Saw and Elsie Whetnall, and would
go on to teach at Bedford College (now part of Royal Holloway, University of
London) where Stebbing was professor of philosophy.
It was not
easy for women to establish themselves in philosophy at this time and many
women’s careers were negatively impacted by sexism (Oxford didn’t bestow
degrees to women until 1920, and at the University of Cambridge it even later:
1948). When she applied for G E Moore’s Chair in Cambridge in 1938, Stebbing,
for example, was told by Ryle that ‘everyone thinks you are the right person to
succeed Moore, except that you are a woman’. Blunt to say the least. Similarly,
in a letter to a friend in 1939, Macdonald writes: ‘I have been hoping to get a
permanent lectureship in philosophy … It is difficult in my subject, especially
for a woman.’ Nonetheless, through a pipeline from Bedford College into
academic philosophy (and often back to Bedford College), Stebbing was able to
help several women establish themselves in the profession.
It is also
likely that Stebbing had a hand in pushing Macdonald to focus on the
relationship between philosophy and language. In Thinking to Some Purpose
(1939), Stebbing emphasises the importance of distinguishing between different
uses of language – eg, the difference between descriptive and emotive language
– not only in philosophy, but in public discourse such as politics and
journalism. After working with Stebbing, Macdonald went to Cambridge to work on
a project on the influence of language on the concept of ‘matter’, a topic on
which Stebbing herself once planned to write a book.
Soon after
arriving in Cambridge in the 1930s, Macdonald met Wittgenstein, a towering figure
in 20th-century philosophy. Along with Alice Ambrose, Macdonald attended many
of his lectures – and the two women would go on to publish the so-called Blue
and Brown Books, collated from notes they took between 1932-1935. It is no
coincidence that, from the late 1930s onwards, Macdonald’s work often draws on
what is known as ‘linguistic analysis’ – which is an approach to philosophy
rather than a specific theory. Linguistic analysis was central to
Wittgenstein’s later philosophy (and important in Ambrose’s philosophy, too).
Linguistic
analysis involves paying attention to and drawing conclusions from the language
used in particular contexts, including philosophical debates, scientific
theories, and ordinary (common-sense) language. In her essay ‘Linguistic
Philosophy and Perception’, Macdonald subjects philosophical enquiry itself to
scrutiny, analysing the sorts of ways that philosophers talk and write –
especially in comparison with scientists. This kind of linguistic analysis is a
way of taking a step back and taking a look at the practice of philosophy
itself. It involves answering questions like: What do philosophical
disagreements involve and what do philosophical theories look like?
In a sense,
then, Macdonald’s aims can be thought of as anthropological: she is interested
in making observations about what a particular subsection of society –
philosophers – are doing and providing a description of their activities.
Macdonald takes philosophers of perception as her case study (hence the paper’s
title) and, by paying attention to the language they use, offers an account of
what philosophy of perception really amounts to. Although, as we will see, her
findings stretch beyond just philosophy of perception, they include the nature
of philosophy itself.
Putting the
tools of linguistic analysis to work, Macdonald focuses her attention on the
word ‘theory’. What do philosophers mean when they talk about philosophical
‘theories’? And is it the same thing that scientists mean when they use the
word ‘theory’? Macdonald’s answer is a categorical ‘No’.
She claims
that, when scientists put forward theories, they do so to explain empirical
facts. Scientists put forward hypotheses (eg, ‘Earth is round’ or ‘physical
objects are governed by laws of gravity’), which can then be verified (or
falsified) by experiments and observations, leaving behind only plausible
theories, and eliminating those that are refuted by factual evidence. Thus,
Macdonald writes: ‘Confirmation and refutation by fact is an essential part of
the meaning of “theory” in its empirical sense.’
If
‘confirmation and refutation by fact’ based on experiments is essential to the
way that the word ‘theory’ is used by scientists, that provides a basis on
which to examine whether philosophers use the word ‘theory’ in that way. And
this is where Macdonald thinks philosophical theories differ from what
scientists mean by the term:
“They
cannot be tested. Every philosophical theory of perception is compatible with
all perceptual facts.”
According
to Macdonald, philosophical theories cannot be tested. Is that true? What might
she mean by this? Once again, she uses the philosophy of perception as her
example.
Two
opposing positions in the philosophy of perception are direct realism and
indirect realism (I’m going to oversimplify both here). Direct realism is the
view that we directly perceive external objects in the world around us. When I
look out of my window, I directly see a tree – and the nature of my perceptual
experience informs me (directly) about the nature of the tree. Indirect
realism, on the other hand, is the view that I only ever indirectly perceive
objects like trees. What I directly perceive are mental representations – ie,
ideas of trees – that are produced in my mind when my sense organs (eg, my
eyes) are stimulated in the right way and send signals to my brain. I learn
about the world around via these ideas (also known as ‘sense data’) in my mind.
Direct realism might seem more common-sensical, but indirect realism might seem
better equipped to deal with the existence of illusory or hallucinatory
experiences, where I am seemingly not perceiving the world the way it really
is. Given all this, isn’t it true to say that direct realists and indirect
realists disagree on the facts?
In a sense,
yes. But Macdonald’s point is that there is no disagreement on the
phenomenological facts: facts about what it is like to have a perceptual
experience. Both the direct realist and the indirect realist agree that, when I
look out my window, I see a tree. What they disagree on is what it means to say
that ‘I see a tree’ – they disagree on the mechanics of what is going on, or
how best to explain the fact that I see a tree. Most importantly, for
Macdonald, there’s no empirical test available to draw a line between the two
theories. We can’t run an experiment to test for the truth of either theory
because, on the level of experience, both parties agree that it’s true to say:
‘I see a tree.’
Thus, the
first step in Macdonald’s meta-philosophical argument is to show that philosophical
theories are not ‘theories’ in a scientific sense since they lack the essential
criterion of being confirmed or refuted by fact. For this reason, she argues,
philosophical theories, unlike scientific theories, are not in the business of
discovering new facts.
So what is
it that philosophical theories do? Macdonald’s answer is: ‘What they do suggest
are new forms of expression for familiar facts.’
At this
point, Macdonald’s analysis of the value of philosophy takes a turn that would
have made Russell – who tried to move philosophy as far away from the arts as
possible – very uncomfortable. Macdonald claims that philosophy’s value is much
closer to that of art, literature or poetry than science. She explains that the
arts inform us that ‘Language has many uses besides that of giving factual
information or drawing deductive conclusions.’ A philosophical theory may not
provide ‘information in a scientific sense’, she writes, ‘but, as poetry shows,
it is far from worthless.’
By this
point in her career, Macdonald had engaged extensively with the philosophy of
art, the philosophy of art criticism, and the philosophy of fiction. Her
meta-philosophical claims in ‘Linguistic Philosophy and Perception’ indicate
that her engagement with the arts gave her an acute sense of where their value
lies. What’s more, she evidently came to believe that the value of philosophy
is very similar.
A good work
of poetry, art or literature, Macdonald explains, can ‘enlarge’ certain aspects
of human life to help us see and think about them differently. For example,
Shakespeare’s Othello encourages us to think about jealousy by making it the
centrepiece of the play. Or consider the emphasis on humanity’s relationship
with nature in Romantic poetry. In both cases, the artist has ‘zoomed in’ on,
or ‘enlarged’, an aspect of life – in a way that it is not typically enlarged
in real life – to encourage the audience to reflect on it.
Macdonald’s
claim is that philosophical theories act in a similar way – different theories
‘enlarge’ certain aspects of experience. And this, in turn, means that the
proponents of those theories end up telling competing stories. Some
philosophers, like Plato, emphasise the degree to which our senses deceive us.
Others, like Aristotle, emphasise the degree to which sense-experience is key
to knowledge. Again, Plato and Aristotle did not disagree on the facts of
experience – both agree that when I look out the window, I see a tree. But they
disagree about the kind of story we ought to tell about those facts. In Plato’s
story, the senses are the villains. In Aristotle’s, they are the heroes. Thus,
Macdonald writes:
“Everyone,
it is sometimes said, is born either a little platonist or a little
aristotelian. Whatever be the truth of this aphorism has little to do with the
truth and falsity of these doctrines. It refers rather to temperamental
differences.”
What we
find in Macdonald’s meta-philosophy, then, is a 180-degree turn away from the
‘scientistic’ account of good philosophy that Russell endorsed. Russell worried
that choosing between Shakespeare, Shelley or Bergson might turn out to be
simply a matter of individual preference, that there would be no criterion for
showing that one was a better thinker than another. But Macdonald’s claim is
that this is true of any philosophical theory – different stories will suit
different temperaments.
At this
point, one might think: enough is enough. It’s all very well to consider how
philosophy overlaps with the arts, but surely Macdonald has gone too far when
she suggests that philosophical theories are just ‘good stories’. More
formally, one might worry that Macdonald’s account of philosophical debate
generates a problem of relativism.
If
philosophical debates come down to ‘temperamental differences’, then it looks
like there’s no real right or wrong (or true or false) – any more than it’s
right or wrong to prefer John Keats to Shelley, or Sally Rooney to James Joyce.
Macdonald herself articulates the concern like so: ‘Ought not philosophy to be
impersonal, unemotional and strictly rational?’
This leaves
Macdonald with two options. The first is to bite the bullet and accept that,
since artistic judgments are relativistic, and philosophy is like the arts,
then philosophical preferences must be relativistic too. But there is another response
available to Macdonald that does not involve accepting the charge of
relativism. Note that the line of reasoning above depends upon a crucial
assumption: that artistic judgments are relativistic.
Is this
really true? Are judgments about art, literature and poetry purely a matter of
subjective preferences? Some might be tempted to answer ‘Yes’. If I like my
child’s hand painting more than a piece hanging in Tate Modern, I might be
inclined to say that, for me, it is a better piece of art. Similarly, if I get
more enjoyment reading Rooney’s novel Normal People than Joyce’s Ulysses, then
who’s to say that Joyce is a better writer.
However,
elsewhere in her writing – eg, her essay ‘Natural Rights’(1947) – Macdonald
endorses the view that, while artistic judgments cannot be empirically tested –
and thus ‘falsified’ or ‘verified’ like scientific hypotheses – they can be
defended and justified. An art critic can justify their judgment that one piece
of art is better than another. And they can persuade others to agree with them,
and minds can be changed. In that sense, Macdonald suggests, a critic is like a
barrister, pointing to certain evidence and telling a story intended to win
over the jury to a particular point of view. In other words, artistic preferences
are not entirely relativistic.
Consider a
case in which you read a novel and find it underwhelming – it didn’t capture
your imagination or engage you. But later you speak to a friend who explains
how the novel alludes to certain literary tropes, or subverts the genre in some
unique way, or satirises a political movement you were unaware of. You might
find that your mind has changed. Your attention has been drawn to features of
the novel and, to borrow Iris Murdoch’s words, you have been forced to ‘look again’.
In ‘Natural
Rights’, Macdonald argues that ethical judgments (eg, ‘murder is wrong’ or ‘it
is wrong to steal’), while they are not empirical in same way that scientific
hypotheses are – they cannot be tested by experiment – are nonetheless meaningful.
And, again, she draws on judgments about the arts as a model for what
meaningful, but non-empirical, statements might look like. For Macdonald, the
job of a moral philosopher is akin to that of an art critic: both are in the
business of defending or justifying certain judgments or preferences. It’s not,
as Russell says, as simple as liking one image more than another. There’s an
onus on being able to justify or rationalise that preference.
The worry
might persist that surely there’s the matter of truth to contend with.
Philosophical theories might be like good stories, but surely only one of those
stories can be true, or at least closer to the truth than another? Macdonald
doesn’t address this question head-on so it isn’t obvious what her answer would
be. I have attempted to show that her view is that even our individual
preferences can be defended or justified, just like works of art, meaning that
our philosophical views need not purely come down to mere gut intuitions. But I
am tempted to suggest that Macdonald would not be overly concerned about truth
– at least not in the way we usually think of it. Other scholars, like Cheryl
Misak, have connected Macdonald to pragmatist philosophers like Frank Ramsey.
Pragmatism, in a nutshell, is the view that what is true is what is useful. And
different philosophical theories can be useful to different people for
different reasons (such as, Macdonald might add, their temperament). While it
is by no means explicit, the relativistic bent to Macdonald’s account of philosophical
theories might signal that she was influenced by pragmatist ways of thinking
about truth.
While
Russell’s comparison between Bergson’s philosophy and the writings of
Shakespeare or Shelley is intended as a form of criticism, Macdonald argues that
an appreciation of the arts is key to understanding where the value of
philosophical enquiry lies. In fact, Macdonald argues that philosophers ought
to stop trying to make scientific philosophy a thing – because it is dangerous
for philosophy. So long as philosophers like Russell keep up the pretence that
philosophy ought to be like science, they are judging it by a standard that it
cannot hope to meet – precisely because philosophical ‘theories’ aren’t
empirically testable.
But
Macdonald’s attempts to push philosophy away from science and towards the arts
isn’t just a defensive manoeuvre. It’s also, she thinks, a way of making the
value of philosophy clearer. For Macdonald, philosophy’s value lies not in
providing us with new facts about the world, but rather in helping to see the
familiar in a new light, in drawing attention to features of experience that
might ordinarily pass us by, and by providing us with stories that can help
make better sense of the world around us. Whether her story about what philosophy
is is better than Russell’s story, or just a different story, well, that’s up
to you to decide.
Philosophy
is an art. By Peter West. Aeon, April 15, 2024.
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Abstract
In this paper, I show that, in a number of publications in the early 1950s, Margaret Macdonald argues that art does not admit of definition, that art is – in the sense associated with Wittgenstein – a family resemblance concept, and that definitions of art are best understood as confused or poorly expressed contributions to art criticism. This package of views is most typically associated with a famous paper by Morris Weitz from 1956. I demonstrate that Macdonald advanced that package prior to Weitz, indeed, prior to any other philosopher of art of the period. Despite this, Macdonald’s contribution is nowhere to be found in the subsequent literature on the definition of art. In closing, I raise the prospect that Macdonald was in fact the primary influence on the development of Weitz’s critique of the definitional project.
1. Introduction
I have four aims in what follows. The first is to show that Margaret Macdonald was an early critic of the project of defining art, that is, of attempting to capture the essence of art by specifying the necessary and sufficient conditions for something’s being a work of art. This anti-definitional or anti-essentialist outlook was widespread in the mid-twentieth century (see Gallie, “Function of Philosophical Aesthetics”; Ziff, “The Task of Defining”; Elton “Introduction”; Kennick “Does Traditional Aesthetics Rest … ?”; Kemp “Generalization in Philosophy of Art”; Morgan “Art Pure and Simple”; Berleant “Note on the Problem”; Brunius “The Uses of Works”; Cohen “Aesthetic Essence”). Almost all of those who expressed it took their cue from Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later remarks on language and philosophical method. For this reason, the outlook has been dubbed “Neo-Wittgensteinian” (Carroll, Philosophy of Art, 209) or “First Wave Wittgensteinianism” (Guyer, History of Modern Aesthetics, 449). That Macdonald shared this outlook is no doubt due in part to her having attended Wittgenstein’s lectures while holding a research fellowship at Girton College, Cambridge (1934–1937).
My second aim is to show that Macdonald was in fact the first Wittgenstein-influenced aesthetician – indeed, the first philosopher of any persuasion – to articulate in print all of what are taken to be the central ideas of Weitz’s paper. This is not to dispute the sociological remarks on the influence Weitz had on the subsequent literature, though I do deny that Weitz was the “first” Wittgensteinian critic of the definitional project (Kivy, Philosophies of Arts, 31).
Relatedly, I do not claim here that Macdonald was influential in the same way or to the same degree as Weitz or, for that matter, other anti-essentialists. On the contrary, my third aim is to show that, despite advocating for this position, Macdonald disappeared more or less immediately from the literature on definitions of art and has been overlooked ever since.
Many contributors to that literature do acknowledge predecessors to Weitz. In doing so, some have speculated as to the influence of Paul Ziff, in particular, on the development of Weitz’s position (Mothersill, Beauty Restored, 42; Guyer, History of Modern Aesthetics, 459). My fourth and most ambitious aim is to make the case that Macdonald was in fact the catalyst for and most proximal influence on Weitz’s turn to anti-essentialism.
My hope is that the paper, in meeting these aims, will go some way to restoring Macdonald’s place in histories of and contemporary contributions to debates in philosophy of art and aesthetics concerning the desirability and feasibility of defining art.
I should stress that it is not my aim here to contribute to those debates. Nor is it my aim to explain why Macdonald’s anti-essentialism has disappeared so completely from view, but I will note some salient considerations before proceeding to the main discussion. First, Macdonald’s critical comments on the definitional project are frequently to be found in reviews and critical notices, rather than articles or books, which one might expect to receive more attention. While comments of this sort do also occur in an article (“Art and Imagination”), they do so only as a brief preamble to a discussion the main focus of which lies elsewhere, specifically, on connections between the imagination and the creation and reception of art, and, via this, on the ontological status of artworks. Second, it is fair to say that Macdonald did not unpack or defend her anti-essentialist position in anything like the detail that Weitz and some others of the time did. Third, Macdonald’s career was cut tragically short – she died in the year Weitz’s “The Role of Theory in Aesthetics” was published. Setting all of this aside, there is also the fact that Macdonald was a woman. The exclusion of women from the philosophical canon in general (O’Neill, “Disappearing Ink”; Hutton, “Women, Philosophy”) and from histories of the early analytic tradition in particular (Connell and Janssen-Lauret, “Lost Voices”) is well documented and the subject of ongoing study. No doubt the forces responsible for such exclusion were as operative in Macdonald’s case as in others.
2. Macdonald’s anti-essentialism
Aaron Meskin provides a helpful summary of the central ideas in Weitz’s “The Role of Theory in Aesthetics”:
“(1) The concept of art is an open concept and, hence, is indefinable; (2) nevertheless there is an effective method for categorizing and classifying objects as art (a version of Ludwig Wittgenstein's family resemblance method); and (3) traditional aesthetic theories can be seen as a form of covert art criticism.” (“Weitz, Morris”, 2551; see also Davies, Definition of Art, 5–7)
Regarding (1), the idea is that there are no necessary and sufficient conditions for something to fall under the concept of art or, at least, none that are non-trivial and that qualify as capturing the essential nature of art (see Weitz, “The Role of Theory”, 30). Regarding (2), the idea is that what unites the various things that fall under the concept of art is not some common property but, to use Wittgenstein’s words, “a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing” (Philosophical Investigations, §66; see Weitz, “The Role of Theory”, 31). Regarding (3), the idea is that remarks such as “Art is significant form” (Bell, Art), to give one well-known example, are best understood, not as definitions, but as attempts to highlight certain valuable but perhaps overlooked features of artworks of certain sorts for attention and praise. As Weitz puts it, they are “recommendations to concentrate on certain criteria of excellence in art” (“The Role of Theory”, 35).
I will now show that each of ideas (1–3) can be found in Macdonald’s work.
2.1. Indefinability
A natural starting-point is Macdonald’s 1951 review of Weitz’s book, A Philosophy of the Arts, published in 1950, prior to what I will later describe as his conversion to anti-essentialism. Weitz there proposes an “organicist” definition of art: “A work of art is an organic complex of expressive constituents, embodied in a sensuous medium” (51). Macdonald begins her review by complaining of the “primitive state” of philosophical aesthetics in general. The cause is its failure to learn the lessons of “linguistic methodologists”, and its symptom is its ongoing “search for definitions”. Turning to Weitz’s work, her “fundamental criticism of it […] is that its main object can serve no useful, philosophical purpose. For this object, alas, is to find yet another” definition of art, one which “expresses the common properties of all members of a class ‘works of art’” (“Review of Weitz”, 561–2).
Macdonald rejects Weitz’s definition – more on this shortly – and concludes by inviting us “to consider whether definitions and general theories are what is wanted in aesthetics”. The problem, she assures us, is not “lack of care and effort of which Professor Weitz may be completely acquitted. No one could have done more to deserve success”. Rather, Macdonald claims, it is a problem of principle: Works of art do not “constitute a class united by common properties” (“Review of Weitz”, 563–4). And that is just to say that artworks do not share an essence.
Macdonald’s most sustained discussion of the topic is found in a contribution to the 1952–1953 proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. She objects there to “traditional theories in aesthetics” that “seek a completely general answer to the question ‘What is Art?’ or a simple definition of ‘Art’ which will apply to all works of art without exception”. Such definitions, Macdonald says, “fail to give a satisfactory account of the subject because their inventors ignore the complexities of discourse about art” (“Art and Imagination”, 205). Specifically, they overlook that the “collection” of objects to which the term ‘art’ applies is a “heterogeneous” one (206–7), which is to say, not one whose members are united by some common property or defining characteristic.
On what grounds does Macdonald reject the definitional project? Unlike Weitz (“The Role of Theory”, 32), she does not place any weight on the transgressive, dynamic, ever-changing character of art. Like Weitz (“The Role of Theory”, 31), Macdonald in places seems to suggest that if we just “look and see”, to borrow Wittgenstein’s familiar phrase (Philosophical Investigations, §66), we will find that there is no feature shared by all of the many different things to which the word ‘art’ applies. She writes, “The range of objects […] which may be called works of art is very wide and exceedingly various”. What is more, “any artefact whatever may, in certain circumstances, also be a work of art” (“Art and Imagination”, 206).
However, the injunction to “look and see” is not as explicit in Macdonald’s work as it is in Weitz’s. Instead, Macdonald’s recurring complaint about attempts to define art is that the results are either false or unintelligible or trivial (see “Review of Weitz”, 562; “Art and Imagination”, 205; “Critical Notice”, 553). To illustrate, consider Langer’s proposal that art is “the creation of forms symbolic of human feelings” (Feeling and Form, 40). This is false, Macdonald claims, since it excludes “pottery, textiles, carpets and buildings”, which are not (or need not be) symbols (“Critical Notice”, 553). A defender of Langer might try to extend the use of the word ‘symbolic’ from core cases like linguistic and pictorial representations to pottery and the like, but such items have “such different characteristics that its meaning evaporates”. Alternatively, the defender might stipulate a new meaning for ‘symbolic’ such that the definition comes out as true. But, Macdonald objects, this “verbal legislation” makes the definition an empty “tautology” (“Art and Imagination”, 205).
For another illustration, consider Weitz’s “organicist” definition. Taken literally, Macdonald says, it is false, since artworks are not organisms: “There is little resemblance between a symphony and a grasshopper”. Macdonald does note Weitz’s explanation of “an organic system as one whose parts are internally related”. So understood, Macdonald says, the definition is that an artwork is something whose parts are necessary to its being the artwork that it is, which is “true, but tautologous”. Absenting some other explanation of what ‘organic’ means as it occurs there, Weitz’s definition is of no use to the “anxious enquirer” in identifying works of art (“Review of Weitz”, 563).
Of course, if the many definitions that have been advanced in the long history of theorizing about art fail, as Macdonald claims, it does not immediately follow that art is indefinable. Perhaps Macdonald takes the unsuccessful track-record to support anti-essentialism by way of inductive inference or argument to the best explanation. Be that as it may, Macdonald’s principal objection to the definitional project is that it misconstrues “the logic of language”, which is to say that it overlooks the “linguistic function” of terms like ‘art’ (“Art and Imagination”, 205). How, then, does Macdonald think that such terms behave, if not in accordance with general rules or formulae specifying the conditions necessary and sufficient for their application? I turn to that now.
2.2. Family resemblance
In her review of Weitz, Macdonald stresses that, while the objects that fall under the concept of art do not do so in virtue of possessing some common property, they “are not an indiscriminate collection”. Instead, she suggests – in a cautious tone characteristic of the writings of many Wittgenstein-inspired philosophers of this period – that artworks “are, perhaps, more like a family having different branches” (“Review of Weitz”, 564).
Elsewhere, Macdonald elaborates on this suggestion:
“It [the class of artworks] forms an extensive sub-group of the total class of artefacts unified by an indefinite number of related and over-lapping characteristics […] It may be likened, in the current fashion, to a family having different branches than to a class united by common properties which can be expressed in a simple and comprehensive definition.” (“Art and Imagination”, 206–7)
This quotation might suggest that Macdonald does in fact recognize a necessary condition on something’s being an artwork, namely, artifactuality. However, in an accompanying note, Macdonald suggests – again, with characteristic caution – that some “works of nature or natural objects” might qualify as artworks (“Art and Imagination”, 206n1). More fully, Macdonald suggests that the distinction between what is natural and what is artificial is “far from absolute”. As an example, she offers the “County of Surrey”, described (by the BBC, no less!) as a work of art, though it is not an artifact, at least, not in any clear-cut sense. Rather, it is a natural landscape, albeit one earlier transformed by “18th century landowners and gardeners like Capability Brown”. In querying the idea that artworks must be artifacts, Macdonald anticipates another point which Weitz is notorious for having made (see “The Role of Theory”, 32).
To return to the main thread, Macdonald advances the Wittgenstein-inspired view that ‘art’ functions as a family resemblance term, hence, that attempts to specify the necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of that term are misconceived. This point is not, for Macdonald, unique to the word ‘art’. Other words of interest in philosophical aesthetics have, according to Macdonald, the same character. In another book review from 1953, she writes, “It may be found that such words as ‘Imagination’, ‘Creation’ and the rest cover whole families of differing and resembling facts” (“Review of Brett”, 418).
2.3. Covert criticism
So far, I have shown that Macdonald maintains (1) that the term ‘art’ is indefinable and (because) (2) its uses track family resemblances among different works of art, not some property common to them all. What about (3) the claim that art theory is disguised or inadvertent art criticism? In her review of Weitz, Macdonald makes this point too with striking wit:
“For since Plato, their initiator, such formulae have been used almost exclusively by ardent partizans as the school badges, battle cries and brickbats of art discussion.” (562)
Macdonald spells this out more fully elsewhere:
“It is these selections [of qualities on the basis of which the word ‘art’ is applied] present in certain works and especially those favoured at a particular period which are generalized and exalted into absolute standards by aesthetic philosophers. They are enshrined in the slogans already mentioned.” (“Art and Imagination”, 207)
Here Macdonald offers a diagnosis of the sort of philosophical theorizing to which she objects, namely, that it reflects and seeks to promote the tastes of the time. In this respect, the definitions serve a normative, not merely descriptive, role. By way of illustration, Macdonald writes:
“Some works, e.g. excellently represent natural objects, scenes, emotions, situations. They are faithful to or imitate, life. So, for certain theorists, all works worthy to be called works of art must do likewise. Art is Imitation.” (“Art and Imagination”, 207)
In this way, “Art is Imitation” is best understood as a critical judgement concerning what art ought to be, or what good art is, rather than concerning what art essentially is.
3. Setting the record straight
Having established that Macdonald advanced all three of the commitments that are considered central to Weitz-style anti-essentialism, I will now show that Macdonald is in fact the first Wittgenstein-inspired philosopher to have done so.
That Weitz was not the original or the only opponent of the definitional project is recognized by many (though not all) aestheticians and philosophers of art. Here are some representative remarks:
“In the mid-1950s, several philosophers, inspired by Wittgenstein’s talk about concepts, began arguing that there are no necessary and sufficient conditions for art.” (Dickie, Art and the Aesthetic, 19)
“The thought that ‘art’ cannot be defined […] was the central claim of several aestheticians in the 1950s who drew in varying ways on Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblance to support their case.” (Gaut, “‘Art’ as a Cluster Concept”, 25)
“In Anglo-American Aesthetics in the 1950s what might be called anti-essentialism concerning the definability of art was developed by philosophers under the influence of Wittgenstein.” (Diffey, “Wittgenstein, Anti-Essentialism”, 37)
“About the middle of the twentieth century, a number of philosophers suggested that there is no point in trying to define art.” (Davies, Philosophy of Art, 29)
Among articles belonging to this trend that pre-date or are contemporary with Weitz’s “The Role of Theory in Aesthetics”, one or more of the following are often cited: J. A. Passmore’s “The Dreariness of Aesthetics” (1951), Stuart Hampshire’s “Logic and Appreciation” (1952), William Elton’s “Introduction” to Aesthetics and Language (1954), William B. Gallie’s “The Function of Philosophical Aesthetics” (1948) and “Art as an Essentially Contested Concept” (1956), and Ziff’s “Art and the ‘Object of Art’” (1951) and “The Task of Defining a Work of Art” (1953). I will discuss them in turn.
While both oppose theorizing in aesthetics of a certain sort, neither Passmore (“Dreariness of Aesthetics”) nor Hampshire (“Logic and Appreciation”) target the definitional project. Rather, both are concerned to argue against the need for or possibility of general principles for the creation or criticism of items of aesthetic interest, as was Macdonald in her earlier “What Are the Distinctive Features of Arguments Used in Criticism of the Arts?” from 1949.
Elton, in contrast, does express sympathy for those who “warn against the pitfalls of generality” and the associated “predisposition to essentialism”. The term ‘art’, he says, “no more than ‘aesthetics’, necessarily stands for any one thing” (“Introduction”, 3). In making these remarks, however, Elton is explicit that he is representing – while also endorsing – views to be found in the contributions to the volume that he is introducing.
One contributor to that volume – additional to those cited above – is Beryl Lake. In “A Study of the Irrefutability of Two Aesthetic Theories”, Lake gives voice to the idea that art theory is covert art criticism: “Many conclusions in aesthetics are fabricated a priori statements which originally arise from a desire to emphasize one fact about aesthetics to the firm exclusion of the rest” (112). However, first, this remark postdates Macdonald’s on the same point. Second, while Lake criticizes two attempts to define art – specifically, Clive Bell’s (Art) and Benedetto Croce’s (Aesthetic) – she does not express opposition to the definitional project as such or suggest that artworks are united only by criss-crossing similarities. So, unlike Macdonald, Lake does not advance claims (1) and (2) of the anti-essentialist package.
Gallie, in contrast, advances (1) and (2) but not (3) in his “The Function of Philosophical Aesthetics”. Gallie there rejects the “essentialist fallacy” of thinking “that whenever we are in a position to define a substance or activity we must know its essence or ultimate nature” (302). He goes on to say that “our use of an abstract word such as ‘Art’ does not necessarily imply something common to all the objects we apply it to”, and that instead those objects might share only “family resemblances” (303–4). So, Gallie has a claim to being the first to apply (in 1948) this Wittgensteinian notion in a critical fashion to attempts to define art.
It is tempting to think that Gallie also endorses the view of art theory as clandestine criticism when he speaks of the “educative value” of theorists’ claims. However, Gallie is not at this point targeting a definition of art in the operative sense but only two claims that belong to a package which Gallie associates with the “Idealist aesthetics” of philosophers such as Croce (Aesthetic) and R. G. Collingwood (Outline of Philosophy of Art). Those claims are (a) that “there is one way of reading a particular poem, and this gives us that poem's individual meaning and value”; and (b) that “there is (or was) one act of Imagination which also makes (or made) that poem's individual meaning and value” (“Function of Philosophical Aesthetics”, 303). The only significance (a) and (b) have, according to Gallie, is that they serve as reminders that, “if we are to understand art at all, we must begin from what we see or read […] in different works of art and what seems to use to be said or done or intended by them” (313). Evidently, this platitude about how consumers are to go about evaluating and interpreting poems is not an attempt to promote certain works, styles, or genres of art in the way Macdonald, Lake, and Weitz have in mind.
In his later paper, “Art as an Essentially Contested Concept”, Gallie does endorse that diagnosis: “Each [definition of art] in its own highly abstract way gave expression to powerful and justifiable movements in the […] history of the Arts and Art-criticism” (122). However, this paper was published in 1956, after the relevant pieces by Macdonald. Moreover, by this time, Gallie no longer subscribed to the other elements of the anti-essentialist view. He writes:
“Until it is worked out in detail I cannot see that it [the family resemblance view of concepts] provides any grounds for rejecting the view that certain highly general features may in conjunction be found necessary to the heads of object or performance that are commonly regarded as works of art.” (101)
Indeed, Gallie goes on to consider the possibility that the various definitions of art advanced in the past might be combined “to give a single compendious definition of art” – or, at least, of successful art (112).
I turn finally to Ziff. His “Art and the ‘Object of Art’” does not contain a critique of the definitional project. It is primarily an attack on a proposal concerning the ontology of works of art, namely, that they are “imaginary” objects. In contrast, Ziff’s “The Task of Defining a Work of Art” from 1953 does present all the elements of the view commonly credited to Weitz.
According to Ziff, by taking as a starting-point a paradigm example of a specific form of art – for example, a painting – it is possible to specify conditions sufficient but not necessary for something’s being a work of art. Works that do not satisfy those conditions might nevertheless qualify as art, Ziff suggests, in virtue of their similarity to the paradigm case, although “no rule can be given to determine what is or is not a sufficient degree of similarity” (“The Task of Defining”, 65). Moreover, Ziff adds, the conditions sufficient for a painting to be art are not among those sufficient for a work of some other form – for example, a poem – to be art. Nevertheless, the phrase ‘work of art’ applies to both because “each set of characteristics is analogous in composition to every other set”. As a result, Ziff concludes, the label ‘art’ does not apply to all works “in the same sense” (66–7).
According to Ziff, then, a general definition of art is not possible, and what holds together the different uses of the term ‘art’ are analogies or similarities with certain paradigm examples. Ziff supplements this with a diagnosis of what the aesthetician is doing, or is best understood as doing, when they advance a definition:
So, Weitz’s (1–3) are to be found in earlier work by both Macdonald and Ziff. It is likely that they developed their views independently – Macdonald in Britain under the direct influence of Wittgenstein, Ziff in the US under the indirect influence of Wittgenstein via the direct influence of Max Black and Norman Malcolm at Cornell University (see Ziff, “The Task of Defining”, 64n1). In any event, Macdonald was the first to voice all three of the anti-essentialist commitments in her review of Weitz from 1951, which predates Ziff’s paper by two years.
4. Macdonald forgotten
Almost immediately following its appearance, Macdonald’s critique of the definitional project vanished from the subsequent and sprawling literature on the topic.
It is fair to say that many of the anti-essentialists of the period – discussed in §3 – were eclipsed by Weitz. Among both survey articles of debates concerning the definition of art and substantive contributions to it, it is commonplace to refer only to Weitz, though some acknowledge, without naming, others opposed to definitions in aesthetics and philosophy of art (see, in chronological order, Margolis, “Mr Weitz and Definition”; Berleant, “A Note”; Margolis, “Recent Work in Aesthetic”; Brown, “Definitions and Art Theory”; Davies, Definition of Art; Hanfling, “Problem of Definition”; Dickie, Introduction to Aesthetics, 70; Kivy, Philosophies of Arts, 31; Kamber, “Weitz Reconsidered”; Brand, “Glaring Omissions”; Stecker, “Is it Reasonable … ?”; Davies, “Essential Distinctions”; Davies, “Introduction”; McFee, “Art, Essences, and Wittgenstein”; Gaut, “Cluster Account Defended”; Feagin and Meskin, “Introduction”; Meskin, “From Defining Art”; Stock “Definition of ‘Art’”; Davies, “Definitions of Art”; Mag Uidhir, Art and Art-Attempts, 24; Adajian, “Definition of Art”). Of those who do refer to the works of other anti-essentialists prior to and following Weitz, none that I have managed to find include Macdonald in their lists (see, again in chronological order, Beardsley, “Definition of the Arts”; Morgan, “Art Pure and Simple”; Brunius, “The Uses of Works”; Wollheim, Art and its Objects, 172; Dickie, “Defining Art”; Tatarkiewicz, “What is Art?”; Tilghman, But is it Art?; Dickie, Art and the Aesthetic, 19–21; Diffey, “The Idea of Art”; 1979; Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace, 57–60; Mothersill, Beauty Restored, chapter 2; Tilghman, But is it Art?; Davies, Definition of Art, chapter 1; Leddy, “The Socratic Quest”; Novitz, “Disputes about Art”; Stecker, Artworks, chapter 1; Carroll, Philosophy of Art, chapter 5; Carroll, “Introduction”; Gaut, “‘Art’ as Cluster Concept”; Dickie, Art and Value, 57; Stecker, “Definition of Art”; Diffey, “Wittgenstein, Anti-Essentialism”; Graham, Philosophy of the Arts, 224; Levinson, “Philosophical Aesthetics”, 13; Davies, Philosophy of Art, chapter 2; Lopes, “Nobody Needs a Theory”; Neill and Ridley, “Relational Theories of Art”; Lopes, Beyond Art, 46). As the dates of these publications attest, beginning 1958, Macdonald disappeared from view more or less immediately after expressing her concerns about the definitional project. From the late 1950s onward, her contributions to that debate were forgotten.
In his influential critique of the trend they represent, Mandelbaum also refers to the papers collected by Elton. In most of them, Mandelbaum says, we find the view “that it is a mistake to discuss what art […] essentially is” (“Family Resemblances and Generalization”, 219). But Mandelbaum does not explicitly refer to Macdonald or her paper, which anyway, and again, is not one in which her anti-essentialist arguments are to be found.
One contemporary aesthetician who does acknowledge Macdonald in relation to the definitional project is Meskin. Specifically, Meskin refers to Macdonald’s “devastating criticisms” of Weitz’s “organic theory”, as a result of which “Weitz relinquished the organic theory and began to explore the possibility that no real definition of art could be provided” (“Weitz, Morris”, 2551). But Meskin does not note that this possibility is one Macdonald herself took to obtain. Nor does he mention other respects in which Macdonald anticipates the position that Weitz would go on to develop.
In a similar fashion, in a survey of (then) recent work in aesthetics, Joseph Margolis mentions “Macdonald's criticism of Weitz's organismic theory of art (which he has acknowledged)” (“Recent Work in Aesthetics”, 187). But Margolis does not recognize Macdonald’s more general opposition to the definitional project, or her positive proposal that art is a family resemblance concept, or her reinterpretation of art theory as art criticism.
The ways in which Meskin and Margolis present Macdonald’s role in the debate surrounding the definition of art correspond closely to Weitz’s own presentation, to which I now turn.
5. Weitz’s conversion
It is instructive to situate Weitz’s “The Role of Theory in Aesthetics” in relation to his work in the years immediately before. As noted in §2, prior to opposing the definitional project in philosophy of art, Weitz contributed to it. Consider this passage from 1950:
“Every work of art […] is an organic complex, presented in a sensuous medium, which complex is composed of elements, their expressive characteristics and the relations obtaining among them. I hold that this is a real definition of art, i.e. an enumeration of the basic properties of art.” (Philosophy of the Arts, 44)
In addition to advancing a specific definition, Weitz at this stage in his philosophical development holds more generally:
“Philosophy in the main is still the quest for real definitions. In philosophical aesthetics this means that at least one of its central problems remains the definition of the nature of art.” (Philosophy of the Arts, xi)
In an article from the same year, Weitz defended at length the “doctrine that philosophy, whatever else it may be, is analysis as real definition” (“Analysis and Real Definition”, 2; see also “Analysis and the Unity of Russell’s Philosophy”). Before this, in 1947, Weitz published a critique, cited with approval in his Philosophy of the Arts (n2), of what he took to be the “Wittgensteinian” views that “the entirety of philosophy is bad and is engendered completely by linguistic misbehavior”, and that, as he memorably puts it, “philosophy has but one task to perform, to undo all the harm it has created, and then quietly to commit suicide” (“Philosophy and Abuse of Language”, 536). This antipathy persists in a précis of Gilbert Ryle’s The Concept of Mind from 1951. Weitz approves there of Ryle’s “logical behaviourism”, while expressing relief that Ryle does not insist with the “neo-Wittgensteinian” on the “naive and false dogma that the whole of traditional philosophy is a mere abuse of the language of common sense” (“Professor Ryle”, 301).
By the time Weitz published “The Role of Theory in Aesthetics”, his assessment had completely changed. He there describes Wittgenstein as the “model”:
“In his refutation of philosophical theorizing in the sense of constructing definitions of philosophical entities, has furnished contemporary aesthetics with a starting point for any future progress.” (30)
It has – to my knowledge – gone unnoticed that the first expression of Weitz’s Wittgenstein-influenced anti-essentialism appeared two years earlier in a 1954 critical notice of Langer’s Feeling and Form. Weitz objects there to Langer’s theory of art on the grounds that it rests on a conception of language that Wittgenstein had advanced in his early work and that had since “been refuted, and by no other more certainly than by the later Wittgenstein himself” (“Symbolism and Art”, 470). From the later Wittgenstein, Weitz takes the idea that “the meaning of an expression is the rules, regulations, and conventions governing its employment”, and that the manner of such employment is diverse. In this respect, Weitz continues, language is “like an enormous toolbox, full of the most diversified sorts of tools” (471). In view of this, Weitz asks, “Can we really define ‘tragedy’, ‘comedy’, ‘poetry’, yes, ‘art’ itself?” (479) The implied answer, of course, is no. As an alternative account of what unites uses of these terms, Weitz offers the following picture:
“We treat ‘tragedy’ as a name for a finite class of cases (say this and that play of the Greeks and the Elizabethans), and then go on to say, “Anything is a tragedy that resembles the members of this class in some one or number of respects”.” (479)
In addition to rejecting the project of definition, Weitz briefly floats the suggestion that “our definitions have been either honorific slogans or disguised persuasive ones” (479), that is, contributions to art criticism.
It seems, then, that Weitz’s conception of the central tasks in aesthetics and philosophy of art went through a dramatic transformation between 1951 and 1954 – from pro-essentialist and anti-Wittgensteinian to anti-essentialist and pro-Wittgensteinian. A plausible hypothesis is that the cause, or at least a major contributing factor, to this conversion was the publication of Macdonald’s review of Weitz’s book, which might in turn have prompted Weitz to read other work by Macdonald.
The second consideration is that it is a matter of autobiographical record that Weitz read and was influenced by Macdonald’s review. When criticizing his earlier definition on the grounds that the conditions it specifies are not sufficient for something to qualify as a work of art, Weitz refers in a footnote to Macdonald’s “brilliant discussion of this objection to the Organic theory” (“The Role of Theory”, 29n5). This remark only acknowledges one challenge Macdonald raises for one attempt to define art. But, and this is the third consideration in support of the hypothesis, all of the core components of Weitz’s anti-essentialism, if not all of the arguments for them, are present in the review that we know Weitz read, as shown in §2.
One might complain that the suggestion that Macdonald was largely responsible for Weitz’s change of mind overlooks the influence of “Oxford Philosophy”. Weitz spent a year at the University of Oxford in the early 1950s, and, in part to demonstrate that its philosophers were free from the influence of “logical positivism”, he published in 1953 a survey of their contributions (“Oxford Philosophy”). Weitz there notes, “All of these Oxford philosophers agree that Wittgenstein was the single greatest influence” (189). Moreover, Weitz’s survey refers to “the problem of definition and the quest for necessary and sufficient conditions” (198).
My claim, however, is not that Macdonald was the only influence on Weitz. No doubt his exposure to the work of Oxford philosophers of the time – among others – played a part. But it remains the case that Macdonald’s review came first chronologically, and that the substantive content of that review, not just its general philosophical orientation, maps directly on to the contents of Weitz’s later anti-essentialist publications.
I will add to this that the approach to definition that Weitz finds in the work of Oxford philosophers – specifically, in H. L. A. Hart’s “The Ascription of Responsibility and Rights” – is not quite that which Weitz goes on to defend. According to Hart, Weitz tells us, a legal concept such as that of a contract cannot be defined “by specifying the necessary and sufficient conditions for its application, but only by listing the necessary conditions plus a list of exceptions or negative examples that show where the concept cannot be applied, or can be applied in a weaker form”. In this respect, Weitz reports, the conditions of application for the concept are “defeasible”. Moreover, the terms that pick out the defeating conditions – such as ‘exceptions’ – are not “names of elements” or “positive conditions”; they are instead “a way of covering the exclusion of a heterogeneous range of cases” (“Oxford Philosophy”, 202–4).
On this view, then, there is a property common to all the things to which a legal concept applies – in the example, the concept of a contract – albeit one that does not suffice for the application of that concept. Also, while the terms used to specify the defeaters are “heterogeneous”, the proposal is not that they function as family resemblance terms. The various cases in which they apply need not resemble one another in any respect but that they defeat the application of the relevant legal term (Weitz, “Oxford Philosophy”, 204). So, Hart’s account of legal concepts, as Weitz presents it, does not match the account of the concept of art that Weitz later defended, and that Macdonald anticipated.
6. Conclusion
In this paper, I have shown that Macdonald was the first philosopher to defend in full the constellation of views associated with the anti-essentialism of Weitz: that any definition of art is doomed to failure, that the items to which the concept of art applies do not share a common property but bear only criss-crossing resemblances, and that putative definitions are best interpreted as contributions to art criticism. I have also shown that Macdonald’s pioneering ideas were subsequently and entirely neglected. Even those who recognize and detail the anti-essentialist views of other aestheticians of the period than Weitz – such as Gallie and Ziff – overlook Macdonald’s. This is a serious omission since, I have argued, Macdonald’s critique of the definitional project not only preceded Weitz’s but was the primary inspiration for it. If this bold hypothesis does not convince, I can retreat to the more cautious and, I submit, overwhelmingly plausible claim that Macdonald was an important influence on Weitz. In view of these findings, it should be clear that Macdonald deserves a prominent place in the history of anti-essentialism and its assessment.
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