Hi, this is Dr. Gregory Sadler. I'm a professor of philosophy and the president and founder of an educational consulting company called Reason.io, where we put philosophy into practice. I've studied and taught philosophy for over 20 years, and I find that many people run into difficulties reading classic philosophical texts.
Sometimes it's the way things are said or how the text is structured, but the concepts themselves are not always that complicated. and that's where I come in. To help students and lifelong learners, I've been producing longer lecture videos and posting them to YouTube. Many viewers say they find them useful.
What you're currently watching is part of a new series of shorter videos, each of them focused on one core concept from an important philosophical text. I hope you find it useful as well. In the course of his short work, What is Art? , Leo Tolstoy will first examine a number of already provided definitions of art, which he rejects, and then provide his own in- in his view, superior definition that figures art as a means of communication or communion between the producer, the audience, and potentially other spectators or auditors or whoever is experiencing the art. So it's a mode of communication spanning quite a...
potential distance in space or time or culture. And it also has to be artifactual. It's expressed in outward signs. And there's also the purpose of communication there.
So that, in an essence, is his definition of art. And in chapter five, he's going to provide this and flesh it out. He begins chapter five first by...
rejecting other definitions. And he has already examined a number in earlier chapters based on beauty understood as something that could be defined or encapsulated in some way, generally relying on some sort of metaphysics and beauty involving pleasure. So we get a rejection of ways of understanding art that essentially frame it in terms of the pleasure that is being provided by the work of art to the spectator or observer, or you might say the consumer.
So he puts that aside, and then he says there's a few other Definitions, attempts to characterize art that we need to get out of the way as well. He calls one of these the physio-evolutionary type, and that's quite interesting. He says that the latest and most comprehensible definitions of art independent of the concept of beauty would include the following.
Art is an activity already emerging in the animal kingdom out of sexuality and a propensity for play. He says, This comes from Schiller, Darwin, and Spencer, accompanied by a pleasant excitation of nervous energy. Grant and Allen are the people talking about that. So he calls this the physiological evolutionary definition.
And he says this doesn't really work to explain what art would be. It may, in fact, provide us with some feature. of why artworks are produced.
It could be that there is an element of play there, but he says that it's imprecise because it speaks not of the activity that constitutes the essence of art, but the origin of art. And Tolstoy is saying, you can have all that sort of stuff and we could bring in psychoanalytic discussions as well or any of that, but the origins by themselves doesn't get us the essence. what makes art art. Now, another interesting attempt that he talks about, he calls the practical definition of art.
So he says, art is an external manifestation by means of lines, colors, gestures, sounds, or words of emotions experienced by man. And he says, this comes from Veron. He calls this the practical definition, and he says that the practical definition is imprecise.
Why? Because a person can express their emotions by means of lines, colors, sounds, and words without affecting others by it, and the expression will then not be art. So there's a audience dependency, you could say. So the piece that is produced by the, I don't know, let's say musician, and it's never heard by anyone else. Is it really art?
Tolstoy would say no. I think a lot of us would probably say, yeah, of course it's just art that's not being heard. But Tolstoy has something else in mind that he thinks is the essence of art. Then there's a third definition that's provided, and he doesn't give a name to this, but he associates this with Sully. Art is the production of some permanent object or passing action, which is fitted, here's a couple conditions, not only to supply an act of enjoyment to the producer, but to convey a pleasurable impression to a number of spectators or listeners, quite apart from any personal advantage to be derived from it.
So, Art then becomes something that gives pleasure both to the person producing the art, that's pleasant to engage in the art, at least at some stage of it. Maybe the preparatory stuff is not all that pleasant, right? Or shelling out plenty of money for colors is not all that pleasant, but the production is.
And then the audience, the receivers, they get some pleasure out of it. And there's no practical gain in the process. And Tolstoy says, well, you know, that's not bad.
But, he says, under this definition could be included the performance of magic tricks, gymnastic exercises, and other activities that are not art. And on the other hand, many objects that produce an unpleasant impression, as, for example, a gloomy, cruel scene in a poetic description or in the theater, are unquestionably... works of art. So it fails in two different ways.
It includes too much on the one side, and it fails to include some things that we would say are definitely art on the other side. So what is Tolstoy going to offer? Before we look at that, notice that he's not totally rejecting all of these and saying those have nothing to do with art.
As a matter of fact, when it comes to the practical, the expression of emotion side of it, emotion or feeling is going to play an important part. And expression of that is going to play an important part. It's just not enough for a definition of art. And providing pleasure, okay, Tolstoy is rather suspicious of the pleasant part.
But one of the things that the Sully definition does get at is that there's something going on not just for the audience, but also for the person producing. They're engaged in something together. In Sully's case, he's talking about pleasure. In Tolstoy's case, he's talking about something else. So let's look at Tolstoy's own characterization or definition of art.
He tells us that the mistake... that they have made is not considering art as one of the conditions of human life. Something absolutely central to human life.
So he says, if we consider art this way, we cannot fail to see that art is a means of what? He uses this word communion, communion among people. And then he goes on and he says, Every work of art results in the one who receives it, the spectator, the auditor, the observer, the consumer, entering into a certain kind of communication with the one who produced or is producing the art. So, we're going to have a little bit more in just a second, but think about that. What this means is that genuine works of art, works that are expressive of the very essence of art, are going to be providing a communion, whatever that communion is going to be, between the person or persons who are engaged in producing it and the audience who could be there at the present time or could be distant by millennia.
Think about us and Homer, for example. when we read the Iliad. Now Homer, you know, of course, people are going to point out, we're not really sure if there was a single guy named Homer or if it was sort of an ensemble of people working at things. That just reinforces Tolstoy's point. Those producers working through that as a troupe or ensemble or as a bunch of people over a couple hundred years using each other's composition would also be in that communion, a growing and developing communion with each other.
So it's a communion among people. Now notice what else he says about this though. It's not just between the producer and the observer. It's between observers and other observers. He says it's communion with all of those who simultaneously with him, before him, or after him have received or will receive the same artistic impression.
So it offers the potentiality of reaching... An audience, some of whom are not yet born, and yet who we would be in a kind of communion with. Something, you know, that spans the ages. What is this communion? So Tolstoy says that the communion is essentially about feelings.
He says that, here we go. as the word which conveys men's thoughts and experiences serves to unite people, so art serves in precisely the same way. But the peculiarity of this means of communication is that through the word, or through art, people convey their feelings to each other.
He says the activity of art is based on the fact that people, as they receive through hearing or sight the expression of another person's feelings, is capable of experiencing the same feelings as the one who expresses them. So when I listen to a work of music, let's take stuff that's, you know, kind of easy, low-hanging fruit with this. I'm listening to, you know, a gorgeous romantic composition and it's supposed to convey the feeling of triumph over adversity or something like that. According to Tolstoy, if I'm in communion through that work of art with the composer, or perhaps we might also say with the director, the players, all the people who made the thing that I'm listening to, then they're feeling that feeling. I'm also feeling that feeling as well.
He doesn't specify precisely, I mean, do we feel it like? 95% identically, or does it suffice to feel it in kind of broad strokes the same way? Because he doesn't have to.
This is something that we could work out on our own, but the feelings are shared in. And he talks about examples of what has come to be called emotional infection, right? But also sharing the same kind of experience.
So he says, Think about a simple example. A person laughs, another person feels merry. He weeps and the person who hears this weeping feels sad.
A man is excited, annoyed, and another looking at him gets into the same state. With his movements, the sound of his voice, a person displays cheerfulness, determination, or on the contrary, dejection, calm. And this mood is communicated to others. And he talks about this capacity of people.
to be infected by the feelings of other people. And he says, art is based upon this. That doesn't mean that art is entirely that, but that's something essential to art.
Now, is that enough to make it art? He says, no, there's two other conditions that are gonna come up in here. One is that there has to be a purpose of communicating to others.
So the mere fact of coming in and being ticked off that, you know, the train didn't run on time and I got rained on and all that and I take off my coat in an angry way. And, you know, somebody asks me, how are you doing? Day sucks.
Stupid streetcar didn't stop where it was supposed to. That's not yet art, even though it may in fact be communicating my feeling to the other person, who then, according to Tolstoy, would have to get angry or have some kind of emotional response, consonance. with it due to my expressing my feelings. I have to have a purpose of communicating my feelings to others. And that's part of what makes for working in an artistic medium for somebody like Tolstoy.
Then that's the other key thing. There has to be an expression, as he says, by external signs. And he says, art begins when a person with the purpose of communicating to other people a feeling he once experienced calls it up again within himself and expresses it by certain external signs.
So he goes on and he says a little bit later. Talking about a wide range of feelings. He says, feelings, the most diverse, very strong and very weak, very significant and very worthless, very bad and very good. If only they infect the reader, the spectator, the listener, constitute the subject of art. The feeling of self-denial and submission to fate or God portrayed in a drama, the raptures of lovers described in a novel, a feeling of sensuous described in a painting, the briskness conveyed by a triumphal march in music.
The gaiety evoked by a dance, the comicality caused by a funny anecdote, the feeling of peace conveyed by an evening landscape or a lulling song, all of this is art. So all of these things qualify, if there is in fact an emotional communication taking place, as art for Tolstoy. And the one last thing that I do want to talk about with this definition. is the fact that, as we've mentioned earlier, this allows, you could say, communication over a distance.
And so he says that just as, owing to our capacity for understanding thoughts expressed in words, any person can learn all that mankind has done for them in the realm of thought, can in the present. Owing to the capacity for understanding other people's thoughts, participate in other people's activity, and can himself convey thoughts he's received from others to his contemporary and his posterity. There's a similar thing going on with art. He says, owing to man's capacity for being infected by other people's feelings through art, he has access to all that mankind has experienced before him in the realm of feeling, provided it's conveyed.
through the artwork. He has access to the feelings experienced by his contemporaries, to feelings lived by other men thousands of years ago. And it's possible for him to convey his feelings to other people.
So this is a very optimistic sort of viewpoint on the communicability of what's going on in art, right? Genuine art, according to Tolstoy, allows us to respond in such a way as to be able to grasp what's going on in other people's art. Now, that may be a little optimistic. It may be that we require some education and training, as he's going to talk about a little bit later on, in order to appreciate and to thereby understand and enter into communion about what's happening with the art that other people are doing, particularly if they are distant in...
time or in space or in culture from us. But that's the essence of Tolstoy's understanding of art. He thinks that this provides us with a definition.
We really should understand this as a definition that's meant to be normative rather than merely descriptive.