Aesthetic Autonomy and Praxis

Aesthetic autonomy has been given a variety of interpretations, which in many cases involve a number of claims. Key among them are: (i) art eludes conventional conceptual frameworks and their inherent incompatibility with invention and creativity; and (ii) art can communicate aspects of experience too fine‐grained for discursive language. To accommodate such claims one can adopt either a convention‐based account or a natural‐kind account. A natural‐kind theory can explain the first but requires some special scaffolding in order to support the second, while a convention‐based account accommodates the second but is incompatible with the first. Theodor W. Adorno attempts to incorporate both claims within his aesthetic theory, but arguably in his aesthetic theory each is cancelled out by the other. Art’s independence of entrenched conceptual frameworks needs to be made compatible with its communicative role. Jürgen Habermas, in contrast, provides a solution by way of his theory of language. I draw upon the art practice of the contemporary Icelandic‐Danish artist Olafur Eliasson in order to demonstrate this. Keywords: art and ethicsphilosophy of languageAdornoHabermasOlafur EliassonKant Notes * Earlier versions of this paper were presented to the Philosophy Department and the Aesthetics Research Group at the University of Kent, Canterbury, UK in 2009; to the Critical Theory Conference (Images of a Demystified World), John Cabot University, Rome, 2009; to the Australasian Association of Philosophy Conference, 2009; and to the Australasian Society of Continental Philosophy, 2009. I would like to thank the respective audiences for their many comments and suggestions. I am also very grateful to Olafur Eliasson for allowing me access to his studio and archives; and providing me with the opportunity to interview him about his work. Many thanks also to Camilla Kragelund and Anna Engberg‐Pedersen of Studio Olafur Eliasson for their helpful comments. 1 For a discussion on various notions of aesthetic autonomy and their shortcomings, see Goran Hermeren, ‘The Autonomy of Art’, in John Fisher (ed.) Essays on Aesthetics: Perspectives on the Work of Monroe C. Beardsley (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983), pp. 35–49; Lambert Zuidervaart, Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory: The Redemption of Illusion (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991); and Lambert Zuidervaart, ‘The Social Significance of Autonomous Art: Adorno and Bürger’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 48 (1) (1990), pp. 61–77. According to Zuidervaart, some uses of ‘aesthetic autonomy’ pertain to the history and characteristics of art as an institution, while others concern the character, functions and reception of works of art. Some theses are descriptive, others are prescriptive. Zuidervaart also asks that we ‘distinguish clearly between the autonomy of art and our ideas about the autonomy of art’ (Zuidervaart, ‘The Social Significance’, p. 68). 2 Olafur Eliasson, Your Mobile Expectations: BMW H2R Project (Baden, Switzerland: Lars Muller Publishers, 2008), p. 20. 3 The idea is that once one develops the appropriate ethical feeling regarding the relevant ethical maxim, this is sufficient to motivate the corresponding action. This is a reconstruction of Kantian morality but defended by a careful study of his ‘The Analytic of Practical Reason’ (Critique of Practical Reason) in the light of his third critique. See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. and ed. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), particularly pp. 50–89; and Critique of Judgment, trans. W. S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987). 4 Olafur Eliasson in conversation with Jennifer A. McMahon, Berlin, May 2009. A recording of the interview can be found at: http://www.raumexperimente.net/programme.html. 5 Ibid. 6 Kant, Critique of Judgment, particularly §§39–42. 7 Eliasson, Your Mobile Expectations, p. 133. 8 For a summary of changes to the worldview that occurred with the scientific revolution and the way in which Kant aimed to keep ‘intention’ in the world, see Michael Friedman, ‘Exorcising the Philosophical Tradition’, in Nicholas H. Smith (ed.) Reading McDowell: On Mind and World (London & New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 25–57. 9 Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. and ed. Robert Hullot‐Kentor (London: The Athlone Press, paperback, 1999), p. 132. 10 Ibid., p. 133. 11 Ibid., p. 96. 12 Ibid., p. 2. 13 Ibid., p. 6. 14 Ibid., p. 58. 15 Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception’, in Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (London: Allen Lane, 1973), p. 123. 16 Archival material at Studio Olafur Eliasson. Thanks to Camilla Kragelund of Studio Olafur for pointing this out to me. 17 Eliasson interview. 18 Ibid. 19 Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, p. 134. 20 Ibid., p. 136. 21 Ibid., p. 138. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 For a further discussion see: James M. Harding, ‘Historical Dialectics and the Autonomy of Art in Adorno’s Ästhetische Theorie’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 50 (3) (1992) pp. 183–95. 25 Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, p. 353. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid., p. 131. 28 According to Max Paddison, Adorno employs a notion of correspondence which is built on a determinate concept’s relation to its object but adapts it for correspondence between an indeterminate concept and something objective and independent of it, namely the historical artistic materials. See Max Paddison, ‘Authenticity and Failure in Adorno’s Aesthetics’, in Tom Huhn (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Adorno (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 198–221. 29 Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, pp. 17–18. 30 Jürgen Habermas, ‘Modernity versus Postmodernity’ in Cazeaux (ed.) The Continental Aesthetics Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 268–77, p. 272. 31 Jürgen Habermas, ‘Extract from Questions and Counterquestions’, in Cazeaux (ed.) The Continental Aesthetics Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 278–81. 32 Ibid., p. 280. 33 Ibid. 34 Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, trans. T. McCarthy, Vols. 1–2. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984–7), Vol. 1, p. 100. 35 Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro (London: Heinemann, 1972), pp. 311–14. 36 Eliasson interview. 37 I am not using Heideggerian terminology here. If I were, I would want to include what in his system goes under both ‘present‐at‐hand’ and ‘ready‐to‐hand’. 38 This is traditional pragmatism: the nature of the doing, of the process, that institutes that relation is where a theory of language and hence meaning begins. The expressive rather than the representational aspect of language is foundational. It is through its expressive aspect that representation is possible. See Robert Brandom, Between Saying and Doing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 180. See also Brandom’s ‘Facts, Norms, and Normative Facts: A Reply to Habermas’, European Journal of Philosophy, 8(3) (2000), pp. 356–74. 39 See Jürgen Habermas, ‘From Kant to Hegel: On Robert Brandom’s Pragmatic Philosophy of Language’, European Journal of Philosophy, 8 (3) (2000), pp. 322–55

Critical theory · Philosophy of language · Praxis · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy · Philosophy, Science, and History