Context
From Forms and Substances in the Arts
Etienne Gilson
Etienne Gilson’s philosophical writings
are concerned foremost with art’s "forms and substances" as they relate
to the creation of beauty. He questions the mimetic value of art works,
claiming rather that the function of art "is to produce, not to
imitate." This book should contain all the information
necessary to make it intelligible to the reader, but it is only fair to
warn him in advance that he will often encounter expressions such as
"the beautiful" and "beauty." Today such words suffice to discredit a
philosophy in the minds of those who, by confusing the philosophy of
art with metaphysics, imagine "the beautiful" as a sort of ideal
category, a transcendent and immutable thing in itself, which the
artist is duty-bound to imitate. Nothing of this sort is here in
question. Beauty is a property inseparable from being, hence it is
proper to every work of art; the function of art, moreover, is to
produce, not to imitate. We shall never depart from concrete reality
here save to extract from it those concepts which alone enable us to
reflect upon reality. The task as such is difficult enough and subject
to possible errors. Our hope is that none will be added to those which
the book actually contains. For this hope to be fulfilled, all the
reader has to do is to understand the book in terms of the concepts to
which it refers, as we have set them forth. It should be possible to
understand these concepts without necessarily being in agreement with
them. We shall cite some of the concepts which will be taken
for granted here, if not approved, inasmuch as they have been studied
individually elsewhere. It is only a matter of plainly stating some
theoretical positions which shall be posited throughout this study. The
first is the distinction between calology, the philosophy of art, and
esthetics. Calology is a part of metaphysics, whose subject-matter is
the beautiful as a transcendental of being. Hence, it is a branch of
ontology. Being, insofar as it partakes of the beautiful, goes far
beyond the field of art. We do not propose to discuss being in this
sense here. Esthetics is the apprehension of the beautiful as produced
by the fine arts. I do not know whether or not this discipline is a
science; in any case I have never been able to find access to it. The
philosophy of art, if the arts of the beautiful are in question, has as
its object human activity in the general order of making, whose
proper end is to produce beautiful objects. These objects are commonly
known as "works of art." Our assumption here is that both disciplines
share a common concern with the work of art itself, but that they are
in actuality distinct. They are connected disciplines, inasmuch as they
have the work of art in common, but they are as distinct from each
other as making is from knowing, the end of art being to produce a
work, whereas esthetics presupposes its completion. Art terminates in a
work of art, esthetic apprehension makes this terminus its point of
departure. The two disciplines are as different as writing a symphony
is from listening to one. Art alone will be under discussion here,
considerations answerable to esthetics will figure in this study only
as concrete experiences facilitating our understanding of art. The
book’s very title implies acceptance of the classic distinction in
philosophy between matter and form. At the outset the objection can be
raised that this principle, by virtue of its applicability to
everything, actually explains nothing. That is true, at least in the
sense that by itself it does not suffice to explain anything. Our
principal intention has been to determine, as precisely as the subject
matter allows, the structural elements of form not only in the arts of
the beautiful but in each one of the major arts whose proper function
is to fashion this form. The word form does not suggest a very
precise image to the mind. Among the twenty-five meanings or usages of
the word in Littré’s dictionary, none particularly applies to the work
of art. André Lalande’s authoritative Vocabulaire notes first
of all that "this term is almost always opposed to matter" and follows
it with an example illustrating its specific meaning: "A. Geometric
figure consisting of the contours of an object. It is opposed to the
matter of which this object is made. ‘Wax takes the form of the seal.’
" By broadening this notion to the limits of its generality and
extending it to works of art, its meaning might also be described as
that arrangement which makes the parts of a whole out of a plurality of
elements and thereby structures the latter into a distinct object. This
is one of the meanings that confirms the scholastic adage: Forma dat esse. Without pushing as far as the metaphysical ground of the formula,
manifestly we speak of a being only when we can grasp a plurality in a
principle of unity which is precisely its form. This can be the form of
a concept, of a mode of reasoning, of a tree, of an animal, or of a
man; it can also be that of a work of art. To say that a symphony, a
poem or any book is "formless" is tantamount to denying its existence.
This being settled, it remains for us to determine the nature of form
in each particular work of art. Strictly speaking, form is proper to
each art, and its discernment in the very process of perceiving it is
what is called "understanding" a work of art. A critic has a hard job
to determine whether a work lacks form or whether he fails to perceive
it. Even an artist would find it equally difficult to discuss
particular cases, for no two are alike, but we can try to distinguish
the general types of forms proper to some of the fine arts. We shall
not aim further. This attempt, moreover, will lead us directly
to the concept of matter, itself viewed as the kind of plurality which
all artistry knows how to submit to the unity of form. All material
substances are given in nature or made from natural products. Hence any
art involves the use of substances of this type, but what we shall have
to say about it presupposes the recognition of a truth which might be
called Focillon’s law: the material substances of nature establish a new order upon becoming the material substances of art. This is a truth of major importance in the philosophy of art, but
seemingly it is a hopeless task to try to convince those who have not
been convinced by direct evidence or by reading Focillon’s The Life of Forms in Art. In this respect nothing can replace the third chapter of this book in
which Focillon formulates two principles that complement each other.
The first principle states that "all different kinds of matter are
subject to a certain destiny, or at all events, to a certain formal
vocation"; the second that the materials an artist uses for his proper
ends establish a new order "even when they are bound together by the
strictest formal propriety." The material substances of nature and
those of art constitute two distinct realms "even if technical devices
and manufacturers are not introduced." Indeed, all the physical qualities of a material substance enter into the work of art only on the strength of their plastic qualities. They no longer are only constitutive elements of being in the work of art but, more accurately, of being informed with beauty. We
shall come upon these notions again in a more concrete context, but I
thought it would be useful to inscribe them as an exergue, so to speak,
at the beginning of this work. Whatever the reader may think of this
book, I suspect that he will inevitably interrupt his reading to make
some reservation, to add a finer nuance, or merely to deny an
assertion. I did this so often while writing the book and trying to
keep it within its proper frame that I fail to see how others can avoid
doing likewise. The fact is that in matters of art, more than
elsewhere, it is hardly possible to avoid seeming to confuse what one
has not distinguished, or to separate what one does distinguish.
Everything is given as a whole and the philosopher perforce must
distinguish what art itself might try to render all at once. That is
his trade. The friends of art do not need the philosopher to tell them
that one can create beauty out of almost nothing, or lay before her an
enormous amount of the most opulent materials and that, at times, the
same artist does both successively, or dreams of doing so. There is not
a single art which does not use other arts as materials without the
least concern for the purity of essence which the philosopher must
strive to extract because "quiddity" is the primary if not the ultimate
object of his concern. The artist is free; no one is authorized to
prescribe rules for him, nor impose upon him limits. The artist alone
knows what he wants to do, and although the work almost always
falls short of the desired end, partial success or failure are the only
conceivable sanctions of his work. They come too late to affect it, and
they are so uncertain that it is very difficult to say something
intelligible about them. Be that as it may, I hope I have not provided
any pretext for condemning or despising any particular work of art; I
would like to be able to love them all, and I certainly have no
intention of spoiling the pleasure others derive from some works of art
which my own limitations often prevent me from enjoying. I merely
wanted to put my own ideas into some kind of order; I hope too that I
have avoided the spirit of controversy that flares up so easily over
these matters; if on occasion I have taken the positions of others into
consideration, it was only for the purpose of establishing my own more
solidly. There are always several possible orders; it is hard enough to
pursue one and altogether impossible to pursue several of them
simultaneously. Above all, I hope I shall not be taken unduly
to task for having adopted a point of view toward art that may be
considered too narrow. Actually I had to take great pains to keep it
within its proper limits. Only a powerful metaphysical genius can
attempt the synthesis of all aspects of art, including the artist and
the lover of art. Hegel was such a genius. He was well aware of the
inadequacy of the term esthetics as a designation for the object of his
study. Rightly, Hegel saw the cause of this in the German school of
Christian Wolff, in which art was considered from the point of view of
the impression it produces on the beholder. He accepted the term,
however, reserving to himself the right to determine exactly its
different possible meanings in the course of his work: "These lectures
are devoted to esthetics. Their subject is the broad realm of the
beautiful, in particular the field of art and more precisely the fine
arts." Thus esthetics, calology and the philosophy of art are posited
as a whole. We might prefer another attitude with regard to the
problems of art, but since Hegel did exactly what he wanted to do, what
right do we have to pick a quarrel with him? Moreover, a great mind
always finds something interesting to say, whatever the point of view.
Thus Hegel deems the beauty of art to be superior to that of nature,
because it is the work of the spirit. The assertion ties in too neatly
with the requirements of his system not to be slightly disquieting, but
it is interesting. Is it true? I don’t know too much about it and I am
not even sure that it does not compare two realities that defy
comparison, but what is beyond question is that the presence of the
mind is included in the apprehension of a work of art, and Hegel
forbids us to forget it. Furthermore, he defines the origin of art as
"the rational impulse man feels to raise his inner world and that of
nature to spiritual consciousness, to make of it an object in which he
recognizes himself." The definition is somewhat too broad for what is
being defined. Personally, what impresses me in a work of art is the
work itself and not myself. But can we say that Hegel is mistaken? His
definition is loose, but it is not erroneous. But why should we prolong
the discussion further in the course of which all truth would disappear? Translated from the French by Salvator Attonasio
