SEVERIN SCHROEDER
Wittgenstein once remarked that while he took some interest in scientific questions, only conceptual and aesthetic questions could really grip him (CV 91). He was passionate about music and literature, and the sporadic aesthetic observations in his notebooks show a profound understanding of these art forms. He tried his hand at drawing and sculpture. For a couple of years he worked as an architect, together with Paul Engelmann, building a house in Vienna for his sister Margaret Stonborough, completed in 1928 (see Wijdeveld, 1993; and Hyman, 2016). In 1933 and again in 1938 he gave some lectures on aesthetics, students’ notes of which have since been published. And yet, in Wittgenstein’s philosophical writings aesthetics is only ever touched upon in passing.
One of the points that will, I hope, emerge from the following presentation is that the lack of sustained work on philosophical aesthetics in Wittgenstein’s writings is not entirely accidental. For on his view, aesthetic issues are not susceptible of an abstract philosophical treatment. They belong to art criticism, rather than philosophy, and what is more, their discussion can only be addressed to an audience sharing a specific cultured taste.
In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein stated that “Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same” (TLP 6.421), and hence equally ineffable. On this view, works of art can make manifest things that cannot be said. In a letter to his friend Paul Engelmann, he comments on the poem Graf Eberhards Weißdorn by Ludwig Uhland:
The poem by Uhland is really magnificent. And this is how it is: if only you do not try to utter what is unutterable then nothing gets lost. But the unutterable will be – unutterably – contained in what has been uttered.
(Letter to Engelmann 9 April 1917)
The claim that something important shows itself, but cannot be put into words, is generously employed in Wittgenstein’s early philosophy, but absent from his later writings. He critically reverts to the idea of unutterable contents of works of art or other objects of aesthetic contemplation in the 1930s, in the “Brown Book,” and more briefly in Philosophical Investigations, introducing a distinction between two kinds of cases in which we employ the terms “understanding,” “expression,” “meaning,” or “says something.”
We speak of understanding a sentence in the sense in which it can be replaced by another which says the same; but also in the sense in which it cannot be replaced by any other. (Any more than one musical theme can be replaced by another.)
(PI §531)
My understanding of the French sentence “Il pleut,” its meaning, what it says, can be spelt out by a paraphrase in English: it means “It’s raining.” Not so in the case of understanding a theme in music. I may feel equally inclined to say that I know what it means, that I know what it’s all about. But when asked “What is it all about?,” I should not be able to say (PI §527). This is what Wittgenstein calls intransitive understanding (PG 79). We experience something as meaningful, we even seem to grasp the meaning, but we are unable to say what it is (BB 178–9).
Wittgenstein seems to have felt something like this about the poem by Uhland. It appears to have a distinctive meaning beyond the story it tells, significant contents that somehow one can grasp, but which cannot be put into words. But as Wittgenstein came to realize, this appearance is illusory. What gives one a peculiar and forceful impression need not for that matter be the bearer of a peculiar message (cf. BB 158).
The same strange illusion which we are under when we seem to seek the something which a face expresses whereas, in reality, we are giving ourselves up to the features before us – that same illusion possesses us even more strongly if repeating a tune to ourselves and letting it make its full impression on us, we say ‘This tune says something’, and it is as though I had to find what it says. And yet I know that it doesn’t say anything.
(BB 166)
What in such a case we perceive is a specific configuration, something striking, a Gestalt. But one paradigm for what is recognizably specific in faces and sounds is what has a specific meaning. A distinctive facial expression is typically the expression of a particular feeling, attitude, or response. So we are naturally inclined to see a distinctive face as expressive of something even if as a matter of fact it does not express anything. Again, one paradigm of specific sounds are words that convey a particular message. Thus, musical sounds, being also distinctly organized as a recognizable Gestalt, can easily create the illusion of a quasi‐linguistic utterance (cf. Z §161). And with verbal art, that effect is even more natural, but also more confusing. In the verbal sphere, a specific impression is normally created by the particular meaning words convey. Hence the specific aesthetic impression we get from a certain arrangement of words, the unique physiognomy of a period or a poem, is easily experienced as an additional poetic meaning, albeit one that we can’t articulate.
Even if the ineffable aesthetic contents the young Wittgenstein thought he perceived in the poem by Uhland were an illusion, the phenomenon of intransitive understanding can be real enough. That is to say, it is not only that a striking musical or verbal physiognomy may give us a deceptive feeling of understanding; there can be some real understanding as to why notes or words are organized in some peculiar manner, even where their pattern doesn’t represent anything. To understand music is to understand how it develops, how one thing leads to the next, how its parts, with their expressive qualities, relate to each other to make up a coherent whole. Wittgenstein once explained to John King how he didn’t understand the ending of Beethoven’s String Quartet in C sharp minor, op. 131, as in his perception it didn’t seem to fit what went before (Rhees, 1981, pp.69–70). The perception of fit between musical passages that gives us a sense of intransitive understanding is based on familiarity with similar kinds of transition in music, but also on an ability to hear musical transitions as analogous to familiar nonmusical movements or gestures, not least verbal ones.
Why is just this the pattern of variation in loudness and tempo? […] In order to ‘explain’ I could only compare it with something else which has the same rhythm (I mean the same pattern). (One says “Don’t you see, this is as if a conclusion were being drawn” or “This is as it were a parenthesis”, etc. […]
(PI §527)
Thus a repeat may be felt to be necessary. Why? “Well, sing it, then you will see that it is only the repeat that gives it its tremendous power.” Yet this impression is informed by “the rhythm of our language, of our thinking & feeling” (CV 59). Or again, how to explain the apparent necessity with which in the Overture to Figaro the second idea succeeds the first? It seems the natural development. What more can one say?
You could […] compare the transition to a transition (the entry of a new character) in a story, e.g., or a poem. That is how this piece fits into the world of our thoughts & feelings.
(CV 65)
What otherwise might appear to be an indescribable impression can be described, and thus made more familiar, by such a comparison. That is what in such a case understanding consists in (LC 37).
Wittgenstein begins his 1938 “Lectures on Aesthetics” (according to Yorick Smythies’s notes) with the remark that the subject of aesthetics is “very big and entirely misunderstood” (LC 1). What he means here by “aesthetics” is not the academic discipline of philosophical aesthetics (to which his lectures contribute), but its subject matter, namely: our aesthetic judgments and reactions, both vis‐à‐vis works of art and everyday objects. (It is clear from other passages and remarks too, that by “aesthetics” Wittgenstein tends to mean specific art and literary criticism, or considerations about other objects of aesthetic interest, rather than a branch of philosophy. For example, “What Aesthetics tries to do […] is to give reasons, e.g. for having this word rather than that in a particular place in a poem, or for having this musical phrase rather than that in a particular place in a piece of music” (M 106). Cf. Johannessen, 2004.) It is probably the inclusion of aesthetic responses to everyday objects that makes the subject bigger than one may at first think it is. It comprises not only art criticism, but also the informed appreciation of clothes, furniture, and other artifacts. In his lectures Wittgenstein discusses the example of tailor‐made suits (LC 5).
The fundamental misunderstanding Wittgenstein deplores is one of the nature and status of aesthetic judgments as envisaged by the philosophical tradition. One of the major concerns of modern philosophical aesthetics has been the justification of aesthetic judgments. Both Hume and Kant tried to explain how an aesthetic evaluation could be true or correct, and not just an expression of personal preference. More recently, in the same tradition, attempts have been made to ascertain the truth of some aesthetic judgments by means of scientific psychology, by testing whether the object in question causes pleasure in a suitable class of observers. Wittgenstein’s lectures on aesthetics are characterized by his emphatic rejection of this traditional approach to the subject. He is scathing about the very idea of a science of aesthetics (LC 11), not just because its methods are problematic but because the whole project is irrelevant to aesthetics properly understood. From Wittgenstein’s point of view, the very attempt to prove – be it by philosophical or psychological means – that aesthetic judgments can be objectively true is misguided.
At the center of Wittgenstein’s account of aesthetics lies the notion of a “cultured taste” (LC 8). This need not be a taste in art. One of Wittgenstein’s key examples is sartorial: “a person who knows a lot about suits” and is able to tell a tailor exactly which cut, length, and material he thinks right (LC 5–7). A cultured taste, or serious aesthetic appreciation, has three characteristics:
The second characteristic reinforces the first. Knowledge of the conventional rules of prosody will sharpen one’s awareness of the details of versification. One acquires the concepts to describe, and hence is far more likely to notice, small metric differences. Similarly, mastery of the rules of musical theory greatly enhances one’s perception and understanding of the structural details of a piece of music. And familiarity with the iconographic and representational conventions of a period of painting will make one discern and appreciate more in a painting than is apparent to the untutored eye.
It is important to note that a cultured taste is built on mastery of certain conventional rules, but not exhaustively defined by it. Aesthetic appreciation requires more than knowledge of rules or the ability to apply them in straightforward cases. As a connoisseur, “I develop a feeling for the rules. I interpret the rules” (LC 5). That is to say, my familiarity with the rules – not only with their letter, but also with their spirit – informs my judgments in cases that cannot be adjudicated by mechanical application of rules. In some cases, Wittgenstein suggests, a rule may be more honored in the breach than the observance, for instance, when the perfect regularity of a meter would sound too wooden or monotonous, or when an extra‐metrical stress serves to provide some special emphasis that is rhetorically apt.
Whereas Hume and Kant were anxious to free aesthetic judgments as much as possible from the contingencies of their cultural context, Wittgenstein, on the contrary, urges that these contingencies are of paramount importance. Social conventions, fashions, ideological background, and temperamental inclinations should not be regarded as distorting influences, but as the necessary underpinnings of any serious aesthetic appreciation. What gives substance and significance to our appreciation of art, what makes it more than a superficial liking, is the way it is anchored in a specific culture, a way of life defined by its customs and manners, its moral values, its religious and political beliefs. Hence the ideal of a timelessly valid aesthetic judgment, cut loose from all its cultural moorings, doesn’t make any sense. Just as the proper appreciation of a bespoke suit is inseparable from the sensitivities of a culture in which suits are worn and seen as a manifestation of social respectability, and where small differences in material, color, and fit are noticed with approval or disapproval. To somebody from a different culture with very different sartorial customs a European three‐piece suit may look exotically charming or beautiful, but such a person would be unable seriously to appreciate it (cf. LC 8–9).
Moreover, a cultured taste is hardly ever fully determined by a culture, but also to a large extent shaped by personal inclinations. Two equally knowledgeable connoisseurs of suits can have markedly different tastes: one, according to his temperament, likes an element of panache and daring in his dress, whereas the other prefers a suit to be as discreet as possible. Both their aesthetic judgments are equally respectable, being well informed (i), showing awareness of the relevant rules of fashion (ii), and displaying the consistency required for a taste (iii). Similarly, two people can be equally knowledgeable in their appreciation of Victorian poetry, yet have completely different lists of favorite poems, enjoying rather different aspects of Victorian poetry. And of course there are also much more radical differences among people’s aesthetic orientation within the same culture. In our current society we find very different cultured tastes coexisting in each art form, sometimes overlapping, sometimes based on entirely different canons and quite different aesthetic conventions. Thus among serious music lovers you find tastes for classical opera, for contemporary dodecaphonic music, for jazz, or for progressive rock music, etc.
Wittgenstein has no interest whatsoever in adjudicating disagreements between different tastes: “Whenever we get to the point where the question is one of taste, it is no longer aesthetics” (AWL 38). Aesthetics is concerned with questions of right or wrong, correct or incorrect (LC 3) – but only relative to a given cultured taste. Only on the basis of some accepted rules and standards can there be what Wittgenstein calls aesthetics: a concern with art or other things that involves interesting aesthetic questions, explanations, and discussions. The attempt to adjudicate between different tastes, or to give aesthetic evaluations independently of a given cultured taste, is as pointless as the attempt to decide which is better, claret or Darjeeling.
Wittgenstein rejects a psychological approach to aesthetics not only because he is not interested in finding an objective basis for our value judgments, but also because he is opposed to the idea that an object’s aesthetic value lies in its positive psychological effects on an audience. The attraction of locating the value of something in its likely psychological effects, in the pleasure or enjoyment it is able to give us, is that it promises to make the most heterogeneous things commensurable. We could after all decide on a ranking of claret and Darjeeling (or even of claret and ice‐skating), if only we could measure the pleasure they are able to afford us. And there would be nothing obscure or controversial about the value of a work of art once it was cashed out in terms of consumers’ pleasure.
However, it is an illusion to think that just because we can use the same word “pleasure” with respect to claret, Darjeeling, and ice‐skating, or indeed opera and motherhood, all these experiences involve the same kind of positive feeling, only in different quantities (AWL 37). In fact, the pleasure of claret is of a very different kind from the pleasure of Darjeeling, let alone ice‐skating; just as different as claret is from Darjeeling or ice‐skating.
Wittgenstein objects to the idea that works of art are instrumentally valuable because of their positive psychological effects. “The work of art does not seek to convey something else, just itself” (CV 67). Unlike a tin opener, a car, or an aspirin, a work of art is not to be regarded as a means to an end. Rather, it is appreciated for its own sake. That is not to deny that works of art can be, and often are, used as means to an end: as a source of information, as political propaganda, as a status symbol, or as an investment. But such uses are alien to art. Using a work of art in one of those ways is not to use it as a work of art.
There are other things that can be valued either as means to an end or for their own sake. A walk, for example, can serve the purpose of keeping in good health, or to familiarize oneself with the area, or as a convenient setting for a confidential conversation. But some people just enjoy walking with no such end in view. For them going for a walk is an end in itself. One might respond, however, that even such a person values a walk as a means to an end, namely as a means to certain agreeable experiences. And likewise, it might be objected that when we say that we value a work of art for its own sake, that is just a different way of saying that we value the aesthetic experiences that it can afford us.
Undeniably, when we appreciate a work of art we value it as a source of aesthetic experiences. But it would be rash therefore to regard works of art as means to an end. For that would suggest that one uses or employs a work of art in order to achieve an effect that is logically independent of that application. In that way, one applies a tin opener, thereby causing a tin to be open; and one uses, swallows, a tablet hoping thereby to cause one’s headache to go away. Yet there is no such distinction between applying a means and achieving an end in the case of the appreciation of art. Looking at a picture or listening to music does not cause an aesthetic experience – it is an aesthetic experience. (It is arguable that in some cases, especially with longer narrative art forms, the aesthetic experience lasts much longer than the actual perception or perusal of the work of art (cf. Kivy, 2006), but even then the latter is clearly the core and most intensive part of that experience.)
Moreover, what is merely a means to an end is, at least in principle, replaceable without loss by other means to obtain the same end. Thus, if a work of art were regarded as a means to procuring enjoyable aesthetic experiences, it should be easily replaceable by other works of art of comparable efficacy; just as one good tin opener can without loss be replaced by another. But in fact, our attitude toward works of art is rarely that promiscuous (LC 29, 34). Somebody going to see an exhibition of Dutch still lifes will hardly be content to be shown a ballet instead, or a volume of sonnets, even if they have equally good claims to being enjoyable. That would be like asking for a tin opener and being given a waffle iron; both useful kitchen appliances, no doubt, but accommodating very different culinary interests. The concept of an enjoyable aesthetic experience is far less specific than most people’s aesthetic interests most of the time. Hence, to say of a work of art that it is supposed to afford us valuable aesthetic experiences is rather like saying of a tin opener that it is to be useful in the kitchen. True, but not a specification of the object’s value.
Furthermore, not only are the aesthetic experiences produced in us by a painting not equivalent to those produced by a play or a poem, they are also crucially different from those produced by other paintings. Works of art are essentially individual objects whose value lies in their individual characteristics (cf. Strawson, 1974). That is what distinguishes them from functionally defined objects, such as tin openers or cars. The aesthetic experience of listening to a performance of Mozart’s Requiem is largely determined by the specific characteristics of (the performance of) the piece of music that is its intentional object. A description of my aesthetic experience would be a description of Mozart’s Requiem, or a particular performance of it, as I perceived it. And this is obviously an experience that could not be produced by any other work (unless my perception was so careless and unschooled that I could not tell the two apart). Therefore, provided that an aesthetic experience of a work of art is appropriately discerning, it is impossible to separate it from the work of art, as if it were the work’s aim and logically independent of it (cf. Budd, 1995, p.4). The link between work and experience is not just causal (like that between aspirin and the removal of a headache), but conceptual: one cannot take an interest in the latter without ipso facto being interested in the former. Therefore, the truism that our interest in works of art is due to an interest in the aesthetic experiences they promise to afford us is not an objection to the view that we are interested in works of art for their own sake. For the aesthetic experience is essentially an aesthetic experience of the work itself. So, the value of a work of art cannot usefully be explained as its function to produce certain effects.
In his lectures, Wittgenstein speaks of aesthetic reactions and aesthetic explanations. Aesthetic reactions are specific criticisms, expressions of a directed discontent, e.g., “This door is too low. Make it higher” (LC 13). They have an intentional object: they are expressions of what one feels about an object of aesthetic contemplation; for example, that it is too low. Wittgenstein is concerned that such a directed feeling should not be misconstrued as an undirected feeling plus a causal hypothesis. It is not that I experience a feeling of discomfort, ask myself what produces that feeling, and then hit upon the hypothesis that it is caused by the lowness of the door. Unlike a causal hypothesis, my truthful report that the door looks too low to me is not subject to empirical confirmation or disconfirmation. In particular, it does not commit me to the claim that if the door were higher I would like it better. That may turn out not to be the case (perhaps once the proportions of the door have been rectified something else will bother me even more); and yet the fact remains that the door struck me as too low (cf. Schroeder, 1993).
Here is an example of an aesthetic reaction drawn from an essay by Dr Johnson in which he discourses on “the injury that grand imagery suffers from unsuitable language” (Johnson, 1751, p.88). He illustrates his view with the following passage from Macbeth:
Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry “Hold, hold.”
(Macbeth, 1.5)
Johnson comments that the force of the poetry is greatly diminished by four inappropriately vulgar words, namely: “dun” (“now seldom heard but in the stable”), “knife” (“the name of an instrument used by butchers and cooks in the meanest employment”), “peep,” and “blanket” (“who, without some relaxation of his gravity, can hear of the avengers of guilt peeping through a blanket?”) (Johnson, 1751, pp. 86–7).
Frank Cioffi cites part of this example (Johnson’s censure on the word “knife”) in order to contradict Wittgenstein’s claim that aesthetic reactions (which Cioffi subsumes under aesthetic explanations) should not be construed as causal explanations. Cioffi comments:
Isn’t it appropriate to protest that no one without an a priori notion of what constitutes permissible poetic diction could have suffered the ‘Disturbance of his Attention from the Counteraction of the Words to the Ideas’ of which Johnson complained and to support this claim by appealing to the fact that those without such preconceptions, though as familiar as Johnson with the domestic associations of the word knife, and just as capable of picking out the ‘low’ words, do not undergo such disturbances of the attention? And isn’t this an inductive procedure?
(Cioffi, 1998, p. 59)
In other words, Cioffi understands Johnson to put forward a causal hypothesis about the effect of “low” words upon readers of Shakespeare. And he submits that Johnson’s hypothesis is false: that even readers who are aware of such words’ domestic associations will not regard their occurrence in this passage as an aesthetic flaw; or, if they do, it will be due to some prejudice about permissible poetic diction.
It is true that judgments such as Johnson’s are often worded very much like an empirical generalization about readers’ responses; but is that indeed what they are? (In his first lecture on Aesthetics, Wittgenstein remarks that going by the form of words rather than by their use was “the main mistake made by philosophers of the present generation” (LC 2).) Suppose that Johnson was to realize that most readers of Macbeth did not mind the use of those household words, would he regard that as a falsification of his judgment? Probably not. He would rather deplore those readers’ bad taste: their lack of poetic discrimination – which would show that his aesthetic judgment was not intended as an empirical generalization.
Of course Johnson has some preconceived ideas “of what constitutes permissible poetic diction.” But far from being a deplorable prejudice, such preconceived ideas constitute what Wittgenstein calls a cultured taste. Needless to say, different centuries have different cultured tastes. So it is not at all surprising that Cioffi doesn’t share Johnson’s eighteenth‐century reaction to “low” words in tragedy (cf. Schroeder, 1993, pp. 274–5).
Aesthetic explanations are answers to particular aesthetic puzzles, that is, puzzles about the effects a work of art has on us (LC 28). We are uneasy or unclear about a specific aesthetic impression and are looking for a satisfactory explanation or expression of it. In this case it seems harder to follow Wittgenstein in denying that there is room for causal investigations in aesthetics. Suppose looking at a façade, to begin with I just feel vaguely dissatisfied with it, before I realize that what is wrong with it is that the door is too low. In this context my complaint that the door was too low would not only be an aesthetic reaction, but also an aesthetic explanation of my previous impression that there was something wrong. And as such it would appear to be a causal hypothesis (cf. Budd, 2008, p. 269). But appearances here are somewhat misleading. It may well be true that it was the insufficient height of the door that caused my initial discontent, but when eventually I realize that the door is too low, this observation is not put forward as a hypothesis. For again, it will have the status of an aesthetic reaction, an avowal of my impression whose truth is guaranteed by my truthfulness. If we assume that my initial discontent was not in fact due to the lowness of the door (but, let us say, caused by a subconscious association with some personal memories), that will in no way invalidate my eventual observation that the door is too low. The point is that when I am looking for an explanation of my vague initial impression, that is because I am not satisfied with it. My explanatory aim is to clarify and sharpen it, that is, to replace an inchoate impression by a clear and precise one. The latter will in some cases also provide a causal explanation of the former, but that is only a side effect. My main concern is a better understanding, an enhanced appreciation of the object in question; not so much a better understanding of the early stages of my own imperfect understanding.
However, aesthetic explanations are not only concerned with sharpening inchoate first impressions by identifying crucial details to which we attribute the effect in question. Sometimes what we are unclear about is not so much which specific details of an object are responsible for its effect on us, but rather why those details should impress us in that way. Wittgenstein is particularly interested in the way aesthetic puzzlement can be cured by peculiar kinds of comparisons or by synoptic representations of relevant variations (LC 20, 29). The only criterion of correctness of such an aesthetic explanation is that it satisfies me; that it removes my puzzlement or disquiet about the impression in question (LC 18–19).
Another discussion of a passage in Macbeth provides a useful example of an aesthetic puzzle and its resolution by an aesthetic explanation (in Wittgenstein’s sense of the term). It is from Thomas De Quincey’s famous essay “On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth” (1823):
From my boyish days I had always felt a great perplexity on one point in Macbeth. It was this: the knocking at the gate, which succeeds to the murder of Duncan, produced to my feelings an effect for which I never could account. The effect was, that it reflected back upon the murder a peculiar awfulness and a depth of solemnity; yet, however obstinately I endeavoured with my understanding to comprehend this, for many years I never could see why it should produce such an effect.
(De Quincey, 1823, p.81)
Again, Wittgenstein would emphasize that no causal, psychological investigation can resolve this kind of puzzle. For one thing, psychological experiments trying to establish the psychological effects of certain kinds of experiences need to be made on a number of subjects (LC 21); but De Quincey is not concerned with the way people generally respond to this element in the play. For all he knows, he may be the only one on whom the knocking at the gate has such a powerful effect. Admittedly, that is unlikely. Those who share De Quincey’s general aesthetic outlook will be likely to share many of his aesthetic responses, including those of perplexity; or at least it will be possible to communicate to them a sense of such a puzzlement and thus make them share it. Still, it is not unconceivable that some such aesthetic puzzlements may be idiosyncratic; and anyway, for resolving such a perplexity it is quite immaterial whether others share it or not.
Of course there are also causal explanations that concern only one person. For instance, I may want to know why a certain kind of food gives me a headache. A causal explanation of such an allergic reaction doesn’t require that anybody else suffers from the same allergy. In such a case, a causal investigation would try to identify the ingredient that triggered my reaction and the general causal laws according to which it comes about. Both the causally active ingredient of the food and the physiological processes it triggers would originally be unknown to me. Thus research into this causal link would have to discover new facts underlying the explanandum and show them to be instances of general laws.
De Quincey’s problem is rather different. He doesn’t want to discover new, hidden, details of the play, but only arrange the known phenomena in a way that highlights certain aspects. Most importantly, a successful explanation in this case will not depend on general causal laws, which need to be objectively established, but merely on De Quincey’s subjective satisfaction. He is looking for a redescription of the relevant phenomena that will make his reaction appear reasonable, or less puzzling, to him. (Cf. M 106: “Reasons […] in Aesthetics, are ‘of the nature of further descriptions.’”) Thus, a crucial feature of this kind of explanation, that sets it apart from causal explanations, is that what seems right to the subject is right. The correct explanation is the one that satisfies me, that dissolves my sense of puzzlement (LC 18–19).
This is the explanation that satisfied De Quincey:
We were to be made to feel that [during the scenes of the murder] the human nature, i.e. the divine nature of love and mercy, spread through the hearts of all creatures, and seldom utterly withdrawn from man – was gone, vanished, extinct; and that the fiendish nature had taken its place. […] The murderers and the murder must be insulated – cut off by an immeasurable gulf from the ordinary tide and succession of human affairs […]. Hence it is, that when the deed is done, when the work of darkness is perfect, then the world of darkness passes away like a pageantry in the clouds: the knocking at the gate is heard; and it makes known audibly that the reaction has commenced; the human has made its reflux upon the fiendish; the pulses of life are beginning to beat again; and the re‐establishment of the goings‐on of the world in which we live first makes us profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that has suspended them.
(De Quincey, 1823, pp.84–5)
Another feature of aesthetic puzzlement that Wittgenstein stresses is that it is often cured by comparisons: between the impression (or what makes the impression) in question and other, perhaps more familiar phenomena (LC 20). Again, De Quincey’s discussion fits the bill. His solution of the puzzle of the aesthetic effect of the knocking at the gate is further elaborated by the following analogy:
if the reader has ever been present in a vast metropolis, on the day when some great national idol was carried in funeral pomp to his grave, and, chancing to walk near the course through which it passed, has felt powerfully in the silence and desertion of the streets, and in the stagnation of ordinary business, the deep interest which at that moment was possessing the heart of man – if all at once he should hear the death‐like stillness broken up by the sound of wheels rattling away from the scene, and making known that the transitory vision was dissolved, he will be aware that at no moment was his sense of the complete suspension and pause in ordinary human concerns so full and affecting, as at that moment when the suspension ceases, and the goings‐on of human life are suddenly resumed.
(De Quincey, 1823, pp.84–5)
Being reminded of this experience from an entirely different area, we will, if we can see the similarity, find our impression of the knocking in Macbeth less odd, more familiar and understandable. The discovery of a persuasive comparison can remove from a phenomenon its disquieting appearance of uniqueness and anomaly (cf. RPP I §1000).
Wittgensteinian aesthetic explanations are not only employed to spot flaws or to resolve puzzles. Sometimes the explanandum may simply be a striking aesthetic experience that we strive to understand better, to bring into fuller consciousness: perhaps something not easily describable that we want to capture by words, thus to clarify our feelings.
Here is a simple example: in Anatole France’s novel Thais, two characters, one virtuous, one sinful, live in different places, then meet, convert each other, and part again in opposite directions: the sinner goes into a monastery, while the originally virtuous man has become a sinner. E.M. Forster suggests a neat description of the experience of the book’s symmetrical form:
We just have a pleasure without knowing why, and when the pleasure is past, as it is now, and our minds are left free to explain it, a geometrical simile such as an hour glass will be found helpful.
(Forster, 1928, p.138)
The book is the shape of an X, or hour glass: reflecting the way the two protagonists’ paths converge, cross at the central moment, and diverge in opposite directions.
Other examples of such synoptic aesthetic explanations, that clarify one’s experiences by giving them a poignant expression, are several remarks in which Wittgenstein tries to characterize the works of different composers, for instance:
A Bruckner symphony can be said to have two beginnings: the beginning of the first idea & the beginning of the second idea. These two ideas stand to each other not as blood relations, but as man & woman.
(CV 39)
Sometimes an aesthetic explanation is not at all concerned with explaining or clarifying a given initial impression, but only with changing our perception, so as to achieve the right kind of impression. This is the type of aesthetic explanation we give to others in order to teach them how to look at a picture, how to play or hear a musical phrase, how to stress a line of poetry, or what to see as the key idea of a novel.
What [aesthetics] does is to draw one’s attention to certain features, to place things side by side so as to exhibit these features. To tell a person “This is the climax” is like saying “This is the man in the puzzle picture”.
(AWL 38–9)
A simple example of such an explanation is the metric instruction with which Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock prefaced his odes to show the reader how his verses should be stressed. Wittgenstein describes how following this instruction made all the difference to his appreciation of those poems (LC 4–5).
Another example: one of the poems Boris Pasternak appended to his novel Doctor Zhivago is called “Hamlet” and may be taken to provide us with a hint as to how to read the novel: namely as a modern version of Hamlet, along the lines of Pasternak’s own rather distinctive interpretation of the play (see Schroeder, 1992).
Or again: to somebody inclined to dismiss Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony as a feeble imitation of Beethoven’s Ninth, Wittgenstein suggests a different perspective:
Bruckner’s Ninth is a sort of protest against Beethoven’s, and because of this becomes bearable, which as a sort of imitation it would not be. It stands to Beethoven’s Ninth very much as Lenau’s Faust stands to Goethe’s, which means as the Catholic to the Enlightenment Faust. etc. etc.
(CV 39)
“Look at it this way!” An aesthetic explanation of this kind is evidently not so much a hypothesis as a suggestion, or invitation, to change one’s attitude toward a work of art in a way that is intended to enhance one’s appreciation. Some such suggestions will be found almost universally persuasive, but others may appeal only to some people, with similar aesthetic inclinations. In some instances I may find myself unable to see a work as suggested by a critic (e.g., to see a character as more sinned against than sinning); or I may be able to look at it as suggested, but find this perspective rather unsatisfactory (say, contrived, or in conflict with certain other features of the work). To use Wittgenstein’s analogy, I may not always be able to see the man in the puzzle picture, and even if I do I may find him clumsily drawn or not well integrated with the rest of the picture.
Finally, I’d like to illustrate one of the key points of Wittgenstein’s account of aesthetic explanation by briefly considering a major debate in contemporary philosophical aesthetics, namely how to resolve the so‐called Paradox of Tragedy, which was tellingly presented by Hume:
It seems an unaccountable pleasure, which the spectators of a well‐written tragedy receive from sorrow, terror, anxiety, and other passions, that are in themselves disagreeable and uneasy. The more they are touched and affected, the more are they delighted with the spectacle.
(Hume, 1741/1985, p.216)
How are we to account for the fact that we choose to watch, for entertainment, theatrical or cinematographic representations of acts of violence and suffering, which should be rather painful to watch?
Various answers have been suggested. They can be grouped under three headings, as: (a) hedonic, (b) cognitivist, and (c) therapeutic answers, respectively.
So, who is right? Which is the correct solution to the Paradox of Tragedy? I think that what Wittgenstein’s remarks about aesthetic puzzles and explanations can teach us is that the problem is misconceived and that any attempt to decide which is the correct answer is hopeless. If Wittgenstein is right, aesthetic puzzles are essentially concerned with individual responses to particular works of art. The right explanation is the one that you find resolves your puzzlement or satisfies you, even though it may not work for me (LC 18, 21). For I may never have experienced the same puzzlement, or even if I did ask the same question, I may not be satisfied by the same kind of answer. In short: aesthetic explanations don’t have the generality that current debates in philosophical aesthetics, such as the debate about the Paradox of Tragedy, tend to assume. The question cannot be answered at the level of abstraction at which philosophical debates usually move.
Indeed, at such level of abstraction there is not even a paradox, but only a very common human inclination, namely to be fascinated by tragic accidents and acts of violence. The press coverage given to the details of gruesome murder cases and horrific disasters in tabloid newspapers (and, in some countries, also in broadsheets) is a clear indication that, in general, people relish to read or hear about others’ misfortunes. To ask a reader of the Daily Telegraph or the Guardian why they don’t feel distressed by the scenes of violence in Hamlet would be daft. If, however, you belong to the minority of people who don’t care to read a minute account of how a 32‐ year‐old accountant from Stevenage visited his parents in Slough and killed them both with an axe – then it is far from clear that you will enjoy watching the blinding of Gloucester (in King Lear) or the murder of Macduff’s wife and children (in Macbeth), however much you appreciate the language and the acting. So, again, Hume’s problem wouldn’t be your problem, since you just don’t experience this “unaccountable pleasure”; nor may you find any other aesthetic value in such scenes of extreme violence.
On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with any of those suggested explanations – as long as we understand them to be different people’s solutions to their respective puzzlement. If Hume finds that scenes that would normally distress him become edifying and a pleasure to watch when skillfully expressed in iambic pentameters – that negative emotions are, so to speak, converted into positive ones by the beauty of language – who can gainsay this account of his aesthetic experiences? And some readers may indeed realize that they had similar experiences, which Hume’s picture clarifies to them. Again, Nietzsche’s keen enjoyment of occasions “to hear people in the most difficult situations speak well and at length” appeals to me as an explanation why I’m happy to watch people in such disagreeable situations, but it would hold little attraction for spectators that insist on naturalistic drama (like the lady described by James Thurber who complains that when Macduff finds Duncan’s dead body he says things like: “Confusion has broke open the Lord’s anointed temple,” whereas, surely, as an innocent man he should rather have said something like “My God, there’s a body in here!” (cited in Braunmuller, 1997, p.44)). Or again, if Susan Feagin can truthfully report that for her the distress of watching violent or tragic scenes on stage is outweighed by the self‐conscious satisfaction she derives from finding herself able to sympathize with the victims, that is nothing we should quarrel with. At most we can say that that is not anything we have experienced ourselves.
So, in spite of the polemical tone in which these discussions are usually conducted, different authors’ solutions to the so‐called Paradox of Tragedy should not be seen as contradicting each other. Each presents – like De Quincey – a solution to his or her own aesthetic puzzle; an account of the values of tragedy (or the tragedies this person has in mind) that satisfies him, and perhaps people with similar tastes and sensitivities, but certainly not everybody. To expect that we should find a generally and objectively true solution to the Paradox of Tragedy is a misunderstanding of the nature of aesthetic problems. Frank Cioffi puts it nicely when he says about the kind of clarificatory, non‐causal, remarks that Wittgenstein commends in his discussions of Freud and Frazer, but also in his lectures on aesthetics: “we must mentally prefix them with the salutation, ‘To whom it may concern’” (Cioffi, 1998, p.18).