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Health & Fitness

Is Art for the Dogs?

One of the many great things about living on the Seacoast is the heavy focus on art. There are so many galleries in Portsmouth, as well as local music venues and bands who play there.

The Friday night "art walk" is always fun, a chance to mingle with fellow art-lovers, view excellent paintings and drawings, and maybe even bump into friends.

You can watch ballet at the Music Hall, if that's your thing (it's not mine). Theatre-going opportunities also abound; between W.E.S.T., the Player's Ring, the Seacoast Repertory Theatre, and musicals and Shakespeare in Prescott Park...you get my drift.

We even have two film festivals every year: Telluride-by-the-Sea and the New Hampshire Film Festival.

The Music Hall also plays movies most weekends. Last Sunday my wife and I actually made a whole day of it: we walked downtown for lunch at Book & Bar, watched Two Who Dared, grabbed a quick drink and some food at Radici, then back to the Music Hall for Wadjda. Then a nice, slow walk back home in northern New England's crisp November air. The Sunday before it was A Hijacking, a brilliant new Danish film sure to be a contender for next year's Best Foreign Film.

Not a bad way to spend one's time.

But is there more to it than that?

Some say yes, some say no.

In the November 3 Parade magazine, advice columnist Marilyn vos Savant was asked the following question by a reader in San Marcos, Texas:

"When I was taking a course called Philosophy of Art, we were asked, 'What does it mean to say that art is something extra, or non-essential, in human life?' Do you agree with the statement, disagree, or find the question offensive, or is it right on target?"

Ms. Savant's answer surprised me. She responded, "I agree that art isn't vital to the human animal, any more than it's necessary for dogs or cats or elephants or fleas. But I strongly believe that art is utterly essential for the flowering of the human psyche. In my opinion, a life without art is like a life without love."

Intriguing.

Art isn't "vital", she says, yet a life without it would be akin to a life "without love" — and missing an ingredient "essential for the flowering of the human psyche"?

That sounds pretty vital to me!

Equally strange is her equating of the human mind to that of a dog's or cat's or elephant's — even a flea's(!) — in this context.

Does that stand up to scrutiny?

I don't think so.

In The Romantic Manifesto, writer and philosopher Ayn Rand wrote, "art is of passionately intense importance and profoundly personal concern to most men — and it has existed in every known civilization, accompanying man's steps from the early hours of his prehistoric dawn, earlier than the birth of written language."

That's the first problem with Ms. Savant's position: dogs, cats, elephants, fleas (!) — none of these creatures even understands the concept of civilization, let alone art. None of these creatures even thinks conceptually, for goodness sake! Left to their own devices, animals eat, sleep, and copulate; they simply are not capable of anything more.

This is of the utmost importance, because just as conceptual thinking is the crucial ingredient of human nature, so too is it an essential part of the role that art plays in the life of a human being. I will quote Ms. Rand at length:

"One of the distinguishing characteristics of a work of art (including literature) is that it serves no practical, material end, but is an end in itself; it serves no purpose other than contemplation — and the pleasure of that contemplation is so intense, so deeply personal that a man experiences it as a self-sufficient, self-justifying primary and, often, resists or resents any suggestion to analyze it: the suggestion, to him, has the quality of an attack on his identity, on his deepest, essential self.

"No human emotion can be causeless, nor can so intense an emotion be causeless, irreducible and unrelated to the source of emotions (and of values): to the needs of a living entity's survival. Art does have a purpose and does serve a human need; only it is not a material need, but a need of man's consciousness. Art is inextricably tied to man's survival — not to his physical survival, but to that on which his physical survival depends: to the preservation and survival of his consciousness.

"The source of art lies in the fact that man's cognitive faculty is conceptual — i.e., that man acquires knowledge and guides his actions, not by means of single, isolated percepts, but by means of abstractions." [Pgs. 16, 17; emphasis in original]

Concepts and abstractions are employed by the human mind, in our understanding of everything. There's only so much we can perceive, but our conceptual awareness is seemingly limitless. Imagine a light year; it's not something that one could ever hope to visualize, but we can understand it conceptually. Even a week, a month, a year, ten years, a lifetime — to understand, all require a mind that functions at the conceptual level of awareness.

Language itself — the words used and required to even have this discussion — is conceptual. "With the exception of proper names," writes Rand, "every word we use is a concept that stands for an unlimited number of concretes of a certain kind....Language is a code of visual-auditory symbols that serves the psycho-epistemological function of converting abstractions into concretes or, more precisely, into the psycho-epistemological equivalent of concretes, into a manageable number of units." [Pgs. 17, 18]

Human beings require action. It isn't enough to think; we must also act. And we must have some understanding of how and why we are doing something. In other words, a human being has to apply his knowledge — "evaluating the facts of reality, choosing his goals and guiding his actions accordingly." [Pg. 18]

Naturally, this leads to a discussion of ethics: what actions are proper for a human being? This, says Rand, "is based on two cognitive branches of philosophy: metaphysics and epistemology. To prescribe what man ought to do, one must first know what he is and where he is — i.e., what is his nature (including his means of cognition) and the nature of the universe in which he acts." [Pg. 18; emphasis in original]

I will again quote Ms. Rand at length:

"Is the universe intelligible to man, or unintelligible and unknowable? Can man find happiness on earth, or is he doomed to frustration and despair? Does man have the power of choice, the power to choose his goals and to achieve them, the power to direct the course of his life — or is he the helpless plaything of forces beyond is control, which determine his fate? Is man, by nature, to be valued as good, or to be despised as evil? These are metaphysical questions, but the answers to them determine the kind of ethics men will accept and practice; the answers are the link between metaphysics and ethics. And although metaphysics as such is not a normative science, the answers to this category of questions assume, in man's mind, the function of metaphysical value-judgments, since they form the foundation of all of his moral values.

"Consciously or subconsciously, explicitly or implicitly, man knows that he needs a comprehensive view of existence to integrate his values, to choose his goals, to plan his future, to maintain the unity and coherence of his life — and that his metaphysical value-judgments are involved in every moment of his life, in his every choice, decision and action.

"Metaphysics — the science that deals with the fundamental nature of reality — involves man's widest abstractions. It includes every concrete he has ever perceived, it involves such a vast sum of knowledge and such a long chain of concepts that no man could hold it all in the focus of his immediate conscious awareness. Yet he needs that sum and that awareness to guide him — he needs the power to summon them into full, conscious focus.

"That power is given to him by art." [Pg. 19; emphasis in original]

"Art is the concretization of metaphysics. Art brings man's concepts to the perceptual level of his consciousness and allows him to grasp them directly, as if they were percepts.

"This is the psycho-epistemological function of art and the reason of its importance in man's life". [Pg 20; emphasis in original]

Think of that exhilaration you feel, when a favorite song or piece of music sends shivers up your spine with such singular ferocity that you're forced to blush lest the shear emotion burst out through the top of your head.

Think of Henry Fonda's — and humanity's — triumph, when they took that final vote in Twelve Angry Men, or when the people of Whoville gathered in unity to loudly proclaim, "We are here!

Think of that one novel above all others that you can point to and say, "That book changed my life!"

Think of a favorite poem — like Keats's "Fill for me a brimming bowl" — that beautifully conveys an otherwise inexpressible sentiment, or one that, like Macaulay's tale of "Horatius at the bridge", perfectly illustrates noble virtues — all in a tangle of rhyming verse.

Think of that painting — maybe it hangs on your wall — that makes you happy to be alive.

Think of the sadness — the sickness — you feel, first in the pit of your stomach, then rising to your chest and throat, as you watch poor, chaste, wronged Hero denounced by the well-meaning but mislead Claudio. Think of the happiness you feel when the truth is revealed — the couple reunited, the wretched Don John fleeing into exile. How we laugh — and cheer — in the comedy of Benedick and Beatrice's romance.

Am I to believe this is no different than the excitement my dog shows when I come home?

A friend of mine told me once, "The beauty of art is that it reminds you that you're going to die one day." I think she is mistaken; when done well, art makes you feel as if you're going to live forever.

Art has played an important role in human existence since the first human beings sketched stick figures in the dust or scratched pictures on a cave wall; it serves a vital psychological need.

Cats and dogs and elephants and fleas do not have or need art, because they do not think conceptually. If they did, they would need art for the same reason that we do: it is "essential for the flowering of the human psyche."

Since the mind is our most important tool for survival, its health must be viewed as nothing less than vital. Like love, a human being can live without art — but it will be an incomplete life.





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