Activating Art Jean-Pierre Cometti The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 58, No. 3. (Summer, 2000), pp. 237-243. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8529%28200022%2958%3A3%3C237%3AAA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism is currently published by The American Society for Aesthetics.
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Symposium: The Legacy of Nelson Goodman
Jean-Pierre Cometti Activating Art What works are depends on what they make. -Nelson Goodman1
For functionalism, any condition or aspect contributing to the aesthetic functioning of a symbol is significant, though such conditions and aspects may be various. Those that actually pertain to the symbol as such seem to play the main role in such functioning; they are the means by which a symbol refers, whether by way of denotation, depiction, or exemplification. On the other hand, aesthetic functioning can only happen in circumstances with which a viewer or a reader is connected-that is where there is someone dealing with them and with a symbol. That is the reason Goodman's view of aesthetics cannot be confused with objectivist or realist theories where aesthetic predicates are taken to designate properties of objects, apart from consideration of the way one may perceive or feel them. But what takes part in symbolic functioning, in the narrow sense of the term, cannot alone really account for all dimensions of aesthetic experience. Other conditions and factors-sometimes very simple ones-must be satisfied in order for a symbol to really function aesthetically. In this regard, Nelson Goodman spoke of "implementation" or "a~tivation."~ I shall try here to investigate such an idea in the following way. My first concern will be to clear up its meaning and some of its consequences for Goodman's theory of symbols. I shall assume we can take "activation," as I shall term it from now on, as an illuminating notion, not only for Goodman's theory and for our understanding of art, but also for Goodman's relation to pragmat i ~ mBut . ~ I have a further reason for making activation my main concern: such a notion may also help to deal with a problem that arises in current French discussion, and particularly in the way GCrard Genette reads Goodman's view of "the aesthetic." So I shall turn then to recent discussion of Goodman's ideas in France, trying to show what place they take in it-at least in Genette's book-in order to bring to the fore what I see as a way of underestimating "activation" in such issues.
Cometti, Activating Art
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I . ART IN ACTION
One of the last papers Goodman read in France was called: "L'art en action." He evoked and enriched in it a notion that appeared explicitly for the first time in a paper from 1982 as "implementation," and that was perhaps latent, even in the . ~ in 1991, latter section of Languages ~ f A r tLater, he labeled this notion "activation."5 At first glance, activation's processes play only a minor part in what defines aesthetic functioning. What Goodman calls the "Symptoms of the Aesthetic" (LA, p. 5; WW, pp. 67-69) is undoubtedly basic-we are tempted to call it essential. What makes an object function in such a way is indeed on a par with what makes it a symbol. On the contrary, activation seems to play no part in this respect, since it appears not to have any relation with what is involved either in the symbol or in the kind of symbol it is. Unfortunately, I cannot invoke any confidence from Nelson Goodman on that subject, but this appearance of disconnection may explain why "activation" (or "implementation") is missing in Languages of Art. Obviously, Goodman later changed his views, giving "activation" a more determining role in aesthetic functioning, and in what being a symbol consists in. Let me briefly try to make this point. Characterizing anything as a symbol amounts to giving it power to refer (LA, "Introduction" and pp. 92-94). Such a capacity obviously presupposes some human surrounding and some actual subject-object relationship within which it holds, but it depends also on properties that we may think have nothing to do with conditions like activation. To perceive a symbol and to recognize it amounts to assuming toward it a special kind of relationship-an "aesthetic relationship" as GCrard Genette calls it.6 But suppose I am looking at some artifact that I take as a symbol, for instance, a picture on a rock or some work of Rembrandt, then I do not have any reason to hold that its being the symbol it is depends on favorable light conditions (or similar ones) prevailing in the place where I have the opportunity to watch it.7 As Goodman wrote in "Art in Theory," "implementation depends upon execution of both stages: a dramatic or musical work exists only if performed, a bronze sculpture only if cast, an architectural work only if built" (MOM,
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism p. 144). Or: "although execution may occur without implementation, implementation can never occur without execution; for how can what is not yet made be implemented?'(MOM, p. 144). Nevertheless, there are at least two reasons for not confining oneself to this fact: "This needs closer examination," as Goodman puts it (MOM, p. 144). First, we cannot identify the symbol with any property possessed by the object without taking into account some actual subject-object relationship.8 Second, symbols, like everything else, have to face, as it were, the ravages of time. Both points show, I think, that activation cannot be conceived as a factor that we might forgo-as a kind of contingency-held apart from what constitutes the symbol as such. This requires further explanation. The first point leads to ontological questions that can be raised from several perspectives, as we shall see below. In Languages of Art, "symptoms" provide the only reasonable answer we are able to give-rather than "a crisp criterionHfor "sorting experiences into aesthetic and nonaesthetic" (LA, p. 252), and perhaps are already a way of giving up puzzling and misleading issues of art's d e f i n i t i ~ nBut, . ~ on the other hand, how are we to understand that a symbol should function a s a symbol, unless what helps to deal with it in such a way rests upon some property or quality within the object--even if such a quality is not a sufficient condition? In other words, what exactly allows Goodman to avoid any ontological commitment on this issue? As is well known, Goodman regarded aesthetics-with reason, I think-as a field in which one easily falls into conceptual confusions and metaphysical traps, which probably explains his special reserve toward some presumed urgent questions-perhaps like this one. Furthermore, as the controversy over exemplification suggests,lO he thought that he did not have to explain why-what makes it the case that-a symbol is recognized as having such-and-such quality. Basically, this prudente rkserve makes room for describing how and when is art, instead of what is art and what sort of objects are artworks metaphysically. But what should happen when we find that we actually have to decide? And, by the way, do we not have to decide?" Are we able to escape from the old alternative dividing the field between realist-objectivist commitments and subjectivist
ones? I think activation helps to do this, but before trying to show why, let me quickly emphasize the part that time is playing in this issue. We remember how Goodman, in a provocative example of his own, imagined someone using a painting by Rembrandt as a means to block a window or as a blanket (WW, p. 67). Used in this way, a painting does not work anymore as a painting, that is, as a symbol. But, though Goodman holds that a painting that becomes a practical object in any particular use remains a painting and therefore a symbol, conditions that make this one really function in some aesthetic way are for sure determinant. Not only are they numerous and of different kinds, but they are changing all the time. In autographic arts, for instance, objects may change physical aspects as the conditions of seeing them change.12Furthermore, if paying more attention to it, we realize that a Rembrandt used for blocking a window does not absolutely contrast with the same work as shown in an exhibition; rather we have to see that use, I think, as a limiting case on the same scale as when it functions aesthetically, which in fact is in quite various ways. Along this scale we may find many alternatives implying better or worse functioning conditions, including what seem to us to be radical changes, because of our habits and expectations, as it happens when the very same object is used for practical concerns or when it comes to be used first in the way of ritual or religious practices and then subsequently as a focus of aesthetic reactions.13 Definitions of beauty and fine arts, as we can see in Kant, were intended to mark sharp boundaries between the aesthetic and the nonaesthetic, art and nonart; it is harder now to do the same. Achieving such a goal would require that there actually be a special kind of object with intrinsic properties such that we should recognize them as works of art on such a survey. Perhaps this way is not at all impracticable, and one may still be both an essentialist and an historicist.14 But it does not mean that aesthetic or artistic properties-the kind of properties that lead us to see a simple object as art-are nonrelational ones. For Danto, for instance, to speak of specifically artistic properties or to contrast art and nonart only makes sense in connection to some "artworld." Suppose that we call activation-in the broadest sense-what helps an object to function aesthetically, without being part of the object as
Symposium: The Legacy of Nelson Goodman Cometti, Activating Art one of its physical or perceptual properties, but occurring in such a manner that it gives to the object some selective and specific characters related to its actual function, then I think we should be allowed to make activation not only a condition of functioning, but also a part of what gives an object a special symbolic status. As Goodman writes, "Although execution and implementation, where both occur, may be distinguished, they make up a continuous process with aesthetic functioning at its end" (MOM, p. 145).The activation process relies on a large range of pragmatic factors, but the main thing is that we cannot see it as only a third term between subject and object, and even less as a parasitic one. Actually, I think we do not have to choose between the two horns of objectivism (or realism) and subjectivism, as I would like to show in turning now to some aspects of current French discussion in relation to Genette's work and the way he tries to overcome what he takes as a deficiency in Goodman's theory. 11. GERARD GENETTE, ON AESTHETIC AND ARTISTIC
L'oeuvre de l'art from Genette is a striking book.l5 It is, I think, one of the most original and innovative books in French aesthetics for a long time, and the most important one for appreciating the impact of Goodman's ideas on present French thought.16 Like many French writers, Genette discovered analytic aesthetics only recently.I7 As he relates, Goodman's work appeared to him as an opportunity for clearing up and further developing his own ideas.18 In his book, Genette sums up Goodman's analysis of art in two main directions. He brings Goodman's notions around to ontology by giving to the question "When is art?" a meaning open to ontological concerns,19 and he puts together Goodman's functionalism and constructionism with his own subjectivism by claiming that works of art necessarily exist in relation to some subject, individual or collective, and that there are not valid universal standards of taste. Subjectivity is the only judge in judgments of taste.20 As to ontological concerns-the first pointGenette makes a distinction between two ways aesthetic objects are, corresponding to two ways of functioning; he calls them "immanence" and "transcendence."*~Then he investigates "immanence's objects" (objetsd 'immanence)in the light
239
of Languages of Art, i.e., within the framework of concepts and categories used by Goodman for describing the several ways works function in autographic and allographic arts. But works of art cannot be narrowly identified with their immanence's object. On the contrary, Genette claims, they only function as art when they prove to be more, that is, by both acquiring the status that Umberto Eco called formerly that of an "open work"22 and by revealing themselves as the product of a special intention. Here we might already be afraid that Genette is putting his finger in more than one pie. He draws on Goodmanian notions in order to give his theory the means it needs to become descriptively powerful, while trying to find a way to give intention a place in a theory of symptoms. In fact, Genette's leading orientation and the words he is using (immanenceand transcendence)seem to be typical expressions of a tendency to think in terms of objecthood, even if such a tendency is ambiguous in his case, since he claims, rightly, that relationships are the main thing in any question concerning art.23 I cannot here thoroughly argue the point, but this tendency seems to me to underlie his predilection for speaking of art and in terms of immanence and tr~nscendence,~~ also his concern for intention. It may also have some connection with his subjectivism. Be that as it may, in Genette we are dealing with a notion that does not belong either to Goodman's language or to his thought. Goodman does not deal with objects but with symbols. Rightly or wrongly, objects are not his concern.*5 As he puts it: "just as an object may be a symbol at certain times and under certain circumstances and not at others, so an object may be a work of art at some times and not at others. Indeed, just by virtue of functioning as a symbol in a certain way does an object become, while so functioning, a work of art" (WW,p. 66, emphasis added). Thus he does not have any reason for making a distinction between two kinds of objects:describing symbolic functioning is one job, questioning about objects is another job, and a complicated one, since you not only have to describe properties and general configurations, but above all you have to explain how it may be thatphysicalproperties, aspects, and characters may relate to such a symbol or other in aesthetic functioning. The ground for Genette's concern with objects is probably-as he emphasizes, and as Kant did
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism before-that aesthetic judgment appears to involve ascribing some property to some object. It is a main axiom in Genette's book that such objectification is part and parcel of aesthetic judgment, even of aesthetics tout court: "The subjectivist theory I am supporting holds that aesthetic appreciation is objectivist by a constitutive illusion" (OA, 2: 106). But investigating taste, judgment, or objects and describing the aesthetic functioning of a symbol are simply not the same.26 In L'oeuvre de l'art. such a discrepancy rests mainly on the aesthetic versus artistic issue. Genette reads Goodman as helping to explain what is the aesthetic functioning of a symbol; he gives us "symptoms of the aesthetic." But--Genette thinks-there is still a gap to cross in order to understand what artistic functioning means exa ~ t l y . ~In7other words, for Genette, the aesthetic is not enough. As Kant helped us to realize, aesthetic does not hold only for works of art, but also for natural objects. I am not, for my own part, absolutely convinced that this point is a happy one. But I would like to go a little further in Genette's company. This objection to Goodman's restricted approach, we could say, is fair enough. But what is at stake here is in fact closely linked to a special discussion that played a large part in recent French literature. It is worth noting that this issue fits significantly with several aspects of the problem of definition in the American aesthetics literature. In the French context, Genette's claims contrast with nonsubjectivist and nondescriptive positions coming either from the traditionalist stream or from more particular ones. The main question is whether a normative dimension is involved in art's d e f i n i t i ~ nGenette .~~ holds that it is not, but, unlike Goodman, he maintains that we are able to define the artistic (articite')-and not only the aesthetic-without relying on any kind of essentialism or ontological realism.29 "If there can't be," he says, "any clue, both sure, perceptible, and immanent to (any) object, of its artistic character, there may be again ... symptoms of the artistic character of our relation to this object" (OA, 2:167). Unfortunately, I cannot dwell more upon Genette's very detailed claims and argumentation, but I would like now to show that there may be here some crucial misunderstanding of Goodman. In other words, and concisely, Genette typically underestimates the part of "activation" in such issues.
111. THE AESTHETIC VERSUS ARTISTIC FALLACY
It seems to me that one feature that makes Goodman's position powerful is giving us the means to escape from traditional traps connected with questions of definition, and more generally from both objectivism and subjectivism. That is what I alluded to before as Goodman's reserve. Indeed I know that what appears to me to be powerful appears as a lack or evasion to many others.3o In this respect, Genette's relation to Goodman looks like expressing a close sympathy accompanied by some amount of dissatisfaction. Such a frustration, I think, depends for the most part on the old Kantian split that usually leads to questioning the respective merits of subject and object. Of course, Genette does not exactly share any such commitment. He claims, from beginning to end, that questions we are able to raise in aesthetics only bear upon what holds in a relationship. But he claims too, typically, that Goodman's contribution has to be subjectivized (OA, 2:42). According to Genette, aesthetic is only on the side of the subject; everything may function aesthetically-including natural objects." We need therefore to differentiate aesthetic functioning as it applies to anything from artistic functioning, that is, the special way that works of art function. Such a claim may be right. But it obviously presupposes the kind of face-a-face that Dewey deplored in Art as Experience." Furthermore, it opens on very puzzling questions. For how could we be giving up-as Genette doesessentialism, objectivism, and ontological realism (OA, 2:149),while investigating the kinds of properties apt to make something artistic as opposed to merely aesthetic? According to Genette, after defining "symptoms of the aesthetic," we have still to grasp "symptoms of the artistic." This notion of symptom is indeed convenient, as long as we are thinking of it in the light of symbolic functioning. For otherwise, we could not escape asking exactly what belongs to the object, such as that a subject reacts to it in one way or another. In some sense. Genette's solution is clear. For him, the symptom we need lies in intention: "An artistic relation to some object takes place as some aesthetic subjects find in it some aesthetic aimthat may be seen as an artistic aim, since according to this definition an aesthetic intention can only hold for a work of art" (OA, 2:256).In con-
Symposium: The Legacy of Nelson Goodman Cometti, Activating Art trast to symptoms of the aesthetic, this symptom of the artistic does not refer to the object but to the relationship we may set up with it through articular attention. Here, nevertheless, one may wonder if intention may reasonably be put on the same level as other relevant symptoms. Goodman's five symptoms indeed relate to the symbol asfunctioning,while intention can only relate either to the objectwe think of the object as made and conceivedor to its symbolic functioning, but on itsphenomenological side-which means in relation to the subject. There is a point in L'oeuvre de l'art at which Genette is just about to admit what could bring him out of this trap. In this passage, he reminds us that on Goodman's account, implementation does not only make a work function as such, but applies to everything that can make anything act a s a work of a r t (OA, 2:262). As Goodman himself writes: "The functioning of a work ... may be moved by everything moving the object, the spectator, or the actual circumstances of observati0n."3~ What is at stake here is obviously the place and meaning of activation in the aesthetic functioning of a symbol. Perhaps we do not really have to seek after something we could call the artistic (contrasting with the aesthetic) by moving between what we are to conceive as subject and object. Perhaps we instead have to take into account what part contextual factors actually play, working in a transactional process, in aesthetic experience. For what makes this experience artistic-for us--cannot be dissociated from such a process. Of course, this depends also on the objects' features, for indeed we are dealing with objects. It is nevertheless worth noting that in present-day art, we frequently have to deal with "working-objects," that is, with objects whose originality consists in including in their problematic contextual aspects and general habits of Factors reacting, which they often ~hallenge.3~ working in activation may depend-to some extent on changing circumstances, but in different ways they also involve permanent features linked to conventions and institutional conditions. The main thing is that either the characters of the object or such conditions alone can be taken as the core or the source of what we call the artistic (versus the aesthetic). In this light, such a contrast appears as an unfortunate fallacy, while ac-
24 1
tivation presents itself as a useful way for changing the subject. So far, I have emphasized Genette's discussion of Goodman in relation to the French philosophical context and to the impact his ideas made on it some years before his death. My own conviction is that regarding the issue of the artistic, Genette underestimatesthe role of condition and processes of activation in Goodman's thought about how works of art function. I also think he is wrong in arguing for subjectivism. Nevertheless, I have to confess-what is probably already obvious enough-that "activation" in Goodman's work is perhaps a more restrictive notion than I have made it out to be. But certainlv Goodman considered it a determining factor in the process of aesthetic functioning. In fact, where Genette suggests we put intention, we should instead put activation. We might then find in it a way of deepening Goodman's affinity with pragmatism, which underlies several aspects of his work, something that should be worth investigating. For such a task, I think we should first drop such a relic as the aesthetic versus artistic contrast, at least in the way it appeared here. As we saw, the question "When is art?'is a more complicated one than it first appears. Goodman's activation is part of the answer to this question, and we probably have to take it as a part of what we usually call "art." As Jacques Morizot writes: "In the last analysis, what is peculiar to works is their capacity of functioning, and not only existing."35 More often than not, once cast out through the door, the enemy comes back through the window. Genette wants to overcome by a subjectivist commitment what he takes as a deficiency in Goodman's theory. Curiously, what he holds as too limited, namely, the aesthetic point of view, provides him with the subjectivist position he claims to be the only one available in matters of taste and evaluation, as if his (aesthetic) subjectivism was the obverse of his commitments on ontological (and artistic) issues. Here I am evoking perplexities that seem to me to arise from ~ e n e t t e ' sown position. For myself, I cannot follow him all the way. I believe that Goodman's aesthetics might still be more profitably investigated than it is in Genette's book, which, however, has considerable merits. His book is probably one of the most useful and stimulating we have had in France on such issues for a long time. It shows how Goodman's
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism ideas proved to be fruitful in a country where opportunities to advance in philosophy come more often than not from outside, either from other traditions or from other fields. JEAN-PIERRE C O M E T T I
DCpartement de Philosophie UniversitC de Provence 29, Avenue Robert-Schuman 13621 Aix-en-Provence Cedex 1 France internet: jpcomet @wanadoo.fr 1. Nelson Goodman, "L'art en action," Cahiers du Muse'e National d 'Art Moderne 41 (1992). 2. "Implementation" is used by Nelson Goodman in Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978), then in Of Mind and Other Matters (Harvard University Press, 1984). Quotations from Ways of Worldmaking will be cited in the text with the abbreviation "W'followed by a page number, and quotations from Of Mind and Other Matters will be cited in the text with the abbreviation "MOM" followed by a page number. 3. See also Richard Shusterman, "L'art comme infraction: Goodman, le rap et le pragmatisme," Cahiers du Muse'e National d 'Art Moderne 41 (1992) and L. Handjaras, "Entre logique et IittCrature: Goodman, Calvino et la construction des mondes," in Cahiers du Musie National d'Art Moderne 41 (1992). 4. See Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to A Theory of Symbols, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976), chaps. 6 and 5 ("Symptoms of the Aesthetic"). Further quotations from Languages of Art will be cited in the text with the abbreviation "LA" followed by a page number. 5. See Goodman, "L'art en action." Let me take this opportunity to remark briefly on the reception of Goodman's work in France and the context in which it took place. This issue of Cahiers du Muse'e National d'Art Moderne had its roots in a conference held in 1991 in Centre Georges Pompidou in homage to Goodman and his work. It was the first one in France devoted to Goodman. It was also the time when Languages of Art, translated by Jacques Morizot, had just appeared in French translation-which was followed by EsthAique et connaissance. a collection of papers gathered and translated by Roger Pouivet; Waysof Worldmaking,translated by M.-D. Popelard; Reconceptions in Philosophy, translated by J.-P. Cometti and R. Pouivet; and L'art en the'orie et en action, the second part of Of Mind and Other Matters, translated by J.-P. Cometti and R. Pouivet. Later a second conference took place in Nancy with Nelson Goodman, on the initiative of Archives Poincart and its director, Gerhard Heinzmann. In each case it was an event, but in order to understand why, we have to place it in its particular French context. Let me first say that in France aesthetics is not-as it is in the United States and the English-speaking worldone field in which philosophers are essentially trying to resolve problems and are exchanging arguments about what they take as puzzling in art or art criticism. History of philosophy weighs heavily in every kind of discussion, and
particularly, history of German philosophy. That means-I do not think I am caricaturing the situation-that most philosophical books on aesthetics deal with Nietzsche, or Heidegger, or Benjamin's or Adorno's views on art. There are exceptions-Deleuze's writings in aesthetics, for instancebut it is rare to find a philosopher dealing directly with questions. That is why French philosophy more often than not leaves to sociology the task of dealing with problems concerning the situation of art today, and also why it generally operates as if art ceased at the end of nineteenth century or at the very beginning of the twentieth, i.e., with van Gogh, the late CCzanne, Matisse, and so on. In such a context Goodman's philosophy of art could not easily take its place among philosophers (note that we could easily contrast his case with that of Danto, whose thought is for the most part in line with "continental" habits in philosophy). But for the very same reason, it could have the force of contrasting and challenging the routine of our native habits. In this respect, the translation of Languages of Art was a striking event. It marked, I think, a turn in the outcome of a process beginning with the late penetration of analytical philosophy in our country, and the special undertaking of a few outsiders such as Jacques Morizot and Roger Pouivet. Apart from their own books (respectively, La philosophie de l'art de Nelson Goodman [Nimes: Editions Jacqueline Chambon, 19961 and Esthitique et logique [Bruxelles: Mardaga, 1996]), there are two others we can take as representative of a new trend in French aesthetics: Jean-Marie Shaeffer's Les ce'libataires de l'art (Paris: Gallimard, 1998) and GCrard Genette's L'oeuvre de l'art, 2 vols. (Paris: Le Seuil, 1994-1997). (Quotations from L'oeuvre de l'art will be cited in the text with the abbreviation "OA" followed by the volume number and page number.) As we shall see below, Genette's book marks an important stage in this evolution. Yet it is worth noting that Genette does not come from philosophy-in the professional sense-but from literary theory and criticism. 6. Genette, L'oeuvre de l'art, vol. 2: "La relation esthttique." 7. Though elementary conditions play a necessary part, as in linguistic communication. Think of what Roman Jakobson called "touch" (contact). 8. Outside of this relationship any property could be a good candidate for playing this role. 9. Cf. "When is Art?' in Goodman's Ways of Worldmaking: "If attempts to answer the question 'What is art?' characteristically end in frustration and confusion, perhapsas so often in philosophy-the question is the wrong one" (P. 57). 10. Cf. Monroe Beardsley, "Languages of Art and Art Criticism," Erkenntnis 12 (1978), and Goodman, "Reference in Art," in Of Mind and Other Matters. According to Beardsley, a work exemplifies every feature it possesses. Goodman's reply is relevant here: he claims that the philosopher's job does not consist in discriminating symbolic values, but rather in analyzing them as they function in practice. 11. That is a point Roger Pouivet makes about Goodman in Esthe'tique et logique, and also in his later book: L'ontologie de l'oeuvre d'art (Nimes: J. Chambon, 1999). His ideas are closely akin to ontological concerns as they are expressed in recent American aesthetics. 12. Goodman particularly developed this issue in two papers: "L'art en action" and "The Ceiling, the Caves, the Book of Hours, and the Public Debt" (a paper read in Viterbe
Symposium: The Legacy of Nelson Goodman Cometti, Activating Art in 1991, for the conference Rappresentazione: Rapporto tra Linguaggio et Immagine). 13. Here I realize I move away from Goodman's position in the strict sense. The problem should be to know exactly what it means to claim-as Goodman did-that a Rembrandt functioning as a board is still a work of art. Many ontological difficulties are implied here, but I think it meaningful to work on the principle of such a scale and such a continuity-provided we are able to explain how the object, whatever it is, could function again not only as a work of art, but also as the work it was before it was used otherwise. Of course, one can also imagine cases where that would not happen. 14. For instance, see Arthur Danto, "From Aesthetics to Art Criticism and Back," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 54 (1996). 15. Genette, L'oeuvre de l'art, vols. 1 and 2. See note 5 above. 16. At least on one of the dominant French trends (namely, structuralism and neostructuralism) of the last forty years. 17. See Genette's interesting autobiographical paper in Figures IV (Paris: Le Seuil, 1999): "Du texte i I'oeuvre." 18. Genette, Figures IV, pp. 33-34. 19. See Genette, L'oeuvre de l'art, vol. 1, pp. 9-10. Genette argues for what he calls a "restricted ontology": "extracting as far as possible what I take as functional (What is it used for, how is it working?) out of ontology (What is it?)." 20. See Genette, Figures IV, "Quelles valeurs esthCtiques," pp. 63-86. 21. See L'oeuvre de l'art, vol. 1, pp. 16-17: "The way works exist and appear does not consist only in 'being' an object. There is at least another way for them to exist, namely in transcending such a 'being,' either because they are embodied in several objects, or because their reception overcomes what only makes this or these object(s) present, and in some way because they survive its (or their) disappearing." 22. See Genette, Figures IV, p. 36. 23. Ibid. Genette refers to Georges Braque who said that relations between terms are more relevant than these terms as such. 24. About immanence and transcendence, the way Genette gives what is for him a first version of the problem is typical: "What is it that makes," he says, "a book from a text?" See Figures IV. 25. Cf. "Art in theory," in Of Mind and Other Matters, against Wollheim, p. 142. 26. Here some nuances are required. Obviously, Genette is concerned with what he calls "aesthetic relationship" and "artistic relationship." Nevertheless, he seems to rely partly on Wollheim's concerns in Art and its Objects, and on Husserl's phenomenology. That can explain why, contrasting with Goodman, he focuses on aesthetic functioning, while relating such functioning to object-subject relationship. It allows him to claim: "I think that Goodman's aesthetics (a term he repudiates) is more subjectivist than he wants to be, or more precisely that it allows a more subjectivist reading
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than intended. Furthermore, I think it cannot tolerate other ones, for its 'symptoms' are nothing except those of aesthetic attention." We can see in this connection to "attention" a major way of bringing Goodman in Kant's horizon. Another way of so giving Goodman's hand to Kant appears in the following statement: "The aesthetic attention applies to this previous condition of any aesthetic relationship that consists-as Kant showed with his 'satisfaction without any concern'-in any object of looking at the aspect rather than at its practical function. This kind of contemplative attention may apply to any kind of objects or events. ... Nelson Goodman described it through the objectivizing words: 'symptoms of the aesthetic,' that I want to construe in a more subjective way." See Figures IV, p. 38. 27. L'oeuvre de l'art, vol. 2, p. 260, where Genette reproaches Goodman for sliding from aesthetic to artistic. 28. See, for instance, contributions around this issue in "Aesthetics," Revue Internationale dephilosophie 198 (1996). The most elaborated position contrasting with Genette's position comes from Rainer Rochlitz in his book L'art au banc d'essai (Paris: Gallimard, 1999). Works of GCrard Genette, Jean-Marie Shaeffer, and Rainer Rochlitz are the main French contributions to this debate. 29. In a sense, while replying to Wollheim, Goodman gave a reply to Genette when he wrote, in "Art in Theory," in Of Mind and Other Matters, p. 142: "We need not look for an aesthetic object distinct from the physical vehicle but only distinguish aesthetic from other more practical functions." 30. It is fair to say that a significant trend of recent works in Anglo-American aesthetics goes against Goodman's attitude. The part problems of definition and ontology play in AngloAmerican aesthetics is unmistakable. As Robert Stecker explains in his Artworks (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), for many people working in the field, temporary abstinence in such matters only helped us realize how aesthetics could not avoid dealing with problems of definition and the like. The work of Stephen Davies, Gregory Currie, and Jerrold Levinson is typical in this regard. 31. Here too, Genette gives to the word "aestheticn-as an adjective-a meaning that refers to Kant and to a special kind of relationship and pleasure. There is obviously here a misunderstanding about what defines "aesthetic" in Goodman's view. In fact, I think we are faced here with a kind of deliberate interpolation on Genette's part. 32. John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Perigee, 1980), p. 3: "When artistic objects are separated from both conditions of origin and operation in experience, a wall is built around them that renders almost opaque their general significance, with which esthetic theory deals." 33. Goodman, "L'art en action," p. 105. 34. Think of Bruce Nauman, for instance, or, for another kind of example in which conditions of experiencing works are parts of those works, think of Robert Smithson and Land Art in a broader sense. 35. Jacques Morizot, Sur le probleme de Borges (Paris: Kimt, 1999), p. 48.
