Metaphor and Symbol in the Interpretation of Art

Abstract

At the intersection of aesthetics and epistemology lies the idea that works of art can convey knowledge of a kind/ and can enrich our understanding of the world. The many theories that have devolved from this central notion include those seeking to explain art in terms of a theory of metaphor: if art can be shown to be metaphorical/ art can therefore generate new meaning/ and so lay claim to epistemic legitimacy. This approach can be found in the work of Arthur Danto/ Mark Johnson, and Carl Hausman, but more recently in articles by A. T. Nuyen and Kirk Pillow/ who claim that the notion of artas-metaphor can be traced in nascent form to Kant's Critique of Judgment 1 Nuyen writes that "it is the Kantian theory that gives epistemologicallegitimacy to the visions of poets and artists .... [I]t is the Kantian theory that places those visions at the center of human rationality" (KM, 108). Both he and Pillow wish to find in Kant an early/ and bona fide, articulation of the epistemological function of art. I will argue that they cannot do so, and that their contentions rest on an incomplete reading of, particularly, sections 49 and 59 of the Third Critique. 2 Kant's goal, I will claim, is more modest than they allow. His conceptions of beauty and the aesthetic ideas of genius function not as metaphors providing new insight/ but as symbols serving to represent rational ideas we already have, enabling us to demonstrate and concretize concepts for which no direct intuition is possible. While Kant does provide insight into how artworks come to have meaning for us, he is not, in the end, breaking ground for a theory of art as metaphor or for a defense of art's function in the acquisition of knowledge. My purpose in this paper is twofold: first, I seek to correct what I regard as an overly ambitious reading of sections of the Third Critique; second/ I shall use Kant's discussion of art to explore what happens in the interaction between a spectator and a work/ and to make some (very modest) proposals about the nature of interpretation. These proposals will emerge largely through an analysis of Nuyen's and Pillow's arguments/ and a reading of Kant's text. I will begin with Nuyen's article, which presents the weaker of the two arguments for a Kantian theory of metaphor. He focuses on §59 of the Critique of Judgment, entitled "Of Beauty as the Symbol of Morality." Here Kant makes a number of observations on symbolism. Symbols are one of three types of "hypotyposis"-presentations, or what Paul Guyer defines as the "rendering of concepts in terms of sense." Concepts must be connected to something we can experience in order to have real meaning; intuitions are just what establish the objective reality of our concepts. Yet the

Metaphors and metaphorical language/s in religion, art and science

“…There is a critical discussion of metaphors in the cultural history of mathematics and art. 13 Mathematicians, natural scientists and artists have long been on a quest to understand the physical world they see before them and the abstract objects they know by thought alone. But is there a chance for them to understand each other's concepts, especially with the help of metaphors?…”