The Subjective Truth of Art – Verbum Caro Factum Est

Forward
Introduction
The Three Parts of Truth
Art and the Three Parts of Truth
Conclusion

Forward

At the start, I must warn those readers who attempt to tackle this paper. Unlike most of my other posts, which are more reflections, this is a paper I wrote for my Theory of Knowledge class this past Spring Semester and expounded upon for further completeness. That means this paper is a bit heavier on technical philosophy terminology. So if after reading there are any questions either contact me directly, or even better post in the comments so I can answer questions that others might have also. I hope to in the next month or so post an introduction to Aristotelian philosophy terminology, however, that doesn’t quite help those who are reading now.

Introduction

In this paper I will look at the subjective aspect of truth in art. Some contemporary notions of art holds that art’s meaning is completely subjective. That is to say, the meaning of art is in the beholder not the artistic piece itself. The truth of what the art is depicting for one person is as equally valid as another, even if they are contradictory. When I say subjective though, I do not mean subject as meant in contemporary art, the one viewing art. Instead, I will look at the subject as the one who creates the art, and how he imparts truth into art. First, we will look at just what do I mean by art. Art will be defined as any skilled, creative work.¹ So art includes more activities besides what we normal consider art.² For example more practical things like carpentry and cooking.

The Three Parts of Truth

Before we look at truth in art we need to first quickly look at truth. Principally, truth is founded on being.³ From this principle, we get three parts:

First: insofar as something is, it is knowable.⁴
Second: the degree to which a thing has being, the more there is to know.⁵
Third: our minds are conformed to the truth of the thing.⁶

The first part has two aspects that flow out of it. The first is that only what exists can be known. Conversely, anything known exists in some respect, otherwise it couldn’t be known. The second is depending on how the thing exists, affects how it is known. This is most directly applied when looking at substantial and accidental being. There is more to know about the substance of a thing than its accidents, because accidents depend on the being of the substance. For example, there is more to know about Joe than about Joe’s tanness. This also brings to light how form is the principle of intelligibility, while matter in itself cannot be known. Both substance and accidents receive their act from their forms. Form being the principle of act, that is being, is also the principle of truth or intelligibility.

This second aspect leads us to the second part, which also has two aspects. The first is that the perfection and privation of the thing affects the know-ability of the thing. The more perfect that a thing is, the more being it has as it perfects its species. So in turn there is more to know about the thing. Similarly, privation removes know-ability from a thing. When an individual is lacking a due perfection, we only know that by knowing the species and its perfections, which are found in other individuals. The second aspect of the second part is that there is a hierarchy of truths, founded upon the hierarchy of beings. Because there are some beings that are higher or more noble naturally than others, we are able to get a hierarchy of truths concerning these beings. The truths concerning man are more noble than truths concerning a rock.

The third part notes that truth is not what we decide or a committee says. Instead, it is the conformity of our mind to the thing that really exist external to us. The thing itself, presents the truth of itself to us and our intellect in turn conforms to the thing. This also means that we cannot say that a thing is something other than what it is and not err. We instead conform ourselves to reality, not reality to us. Having looked briefly at being as the principle of truth, I’ll now turn to art more directly and show how these three statements apply to artistic creations.

Art and the Three Parts of Truth

All artistic activity of man is creative by the manipulation of preexisting things, so as to impose a new form that resides in our intellect onto those things. That is to say, we have an image of what we want to make and then use that which is in the world to make that image a reality.⁷ Now we might not always have a complete image when we set out, however, there is always some image that prompts us to motion. This manipulation though, is accidental. Man cannot create substances.⁸ Properly speaking, man can only construct things.⁹ The closest thing that we can get to true creation is the accidental forms that we impose on objects. Now the forms themselves, which we are imposing in our art, preexist in the world.¹⁰ Just try to imagine a color that you have never seen. All our concepts come from outside of us, our minds start as a tabula rasa.¹¹ What is unique in our art, that is creative¹², is how we combine preexisting forms to create new accidental arrangements of those forms. We can imagine a color we’ve never seen, but only by combining other colors that we have seen and imagining the result.¹³

The Objective Truth in Art

This leads us to being able to speak about an objective sense of art. Because the result of artistic activity is itself a thing, and that thing has being. There is the substance(s) that compose the thing. That substance(s) has an objective truth to it. There are also the accidental forms that the artist imposed on the substance(s) and these also have truth to them. A piece of marble carved into a sphere is objectively a piece of marble and a sphere. We can know the marble itself, and we can know the accident of sphereness itself. This tells about what the thing is as an object. These truths are manifested to us by it and cannot be denied. The thing is what it is. However, when referring to works of art, this is an unsatisfying level of truth. A marble sphere is an insufficient description if it is a cannonball commemorating a great military victory. That second point is a truth of the thing, but it doesn’t reside in the thing in the same way as the other accidental forms like shape or color do. To get to that we need to turn to the artist himself and the subjective aspect of truth in art.

The Subjective Truth in Art

The subjective truth in art arises from the intended meaning of the artist that is placed into a thing created. From our previous example, there is no difference between a marble sphere and a marble cannonball other than what the artist determined he was making. That is to say that the truth of the thing in this case resides primarily in the mind of the artist. The piece of art conforms to the imagined form of the artist, not just the being of the thing itself. This is what makes the spherical piece of marble a cannonball and not just a sphere. At this point it would be helpful to discuss the concept of measured and measuring in relation to truth.¹⁴ A thing is measured by the truth it is given by its creator. A thing is what it is because its creator made it what it is. In making the thing what it is, the creator is measuring the thing. Now when that thing is known by another, the mind of the other is measured by the thing, which is now measuring the other’s mind.

Ultimately, all things are measured by God who is the ultimate measure as He is the first cause¹⁵ of all things. So all things are true insofar as they conform to the measure of God’s mind. However, as stated earlier though, the accidental arrangement that is unique to a particular piece of art comes from the mind of the artist. In such a way is the piece of art measured by the mind of the artist. By the artist measuring the work, there is a truth which resides principally in the artist, but is expressed through the piece. This is the subjective truth in art. That the marble is a cannonball, and not just a sphere, is not disputable if the artist was intending to make a cannonball. The truth of the cannonball is given to the thing by the artist.

This subjective truth though only resides in the thing as a sign of the truth of the form in the artist’s mind. Because truth arises from being, wherever this is a truth there is the corresponding being. We all know though, that when you paint a cat, the cat doesn’t start moving. We don’t actually impart the being of a substantially living cat. Instead, because we are imposing accidental forms, the thing created only signifies the concept that the artist is intending to convey. For example: a painting of God doesn’t take on the being of God, but instead signifies the truth of God’s being insofar as the artist is conveying such.

Ranking and Nobility of Art

Having looked at how truth is imparted on a thing by the artist by his intention, we can speak of a ranking of art. As stated earlier, there are higher and more noble truths based upon being. There are two ways rank the nobility of art. The first is objectively. Objectively the greater the truth that the artist is intending to convey, the greater the truth present in the art. In such a way can we then denote more noble works of art. The second is relatively. A work can be relatively more noble in that it perfects the style of art that it is done in more than other. Or we can say that a work is more noble be cause it more successfully conveys the truth that it is attempting to convey. Conversely, because of this we cannot say that all forms of art are equal or that there isn’t bad art. There can be bad art in that it is lacking perfection in relation to the intended form that artist was striving to form, and there can be bad art in relation to more noble art.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we first looked at the three parts of truth in regard to truth’s relation to being. These parts are that a thing is true insofar as it exist, that the degree to which the thing exists it can be known, and finally that our minds conform to the reality of the thing. Then we looked at how, because artistic activity results in a thing, there are certain objective truths to the thing made. After that we looked at how the artist imparts accidental forms to substances and measures his creation through signification of the truth which he seeks to convey. Finally, this means that we as viewers don’t primarily apply meaning to art, but instead the thing itself and the mind of the artist gives meaning to artistic pieces.

Works Cited

Aristotle Metaphysics, Translated by W. D. Ross http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/metaphysics.1.i.html

Llano, Alejandro. 2001. Gnoseology. Translated by David Sands. Manila: Sinag-Tala Publishers, INC.

Notes

In the first part of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, he discusses art in relation to the wise man. The two characteristics of the provided definition of art are found in Aristotle’s discussion, in that art produces something, and is the result of experience which can also be called skill. For more, refer to the link in the Works Cited for Aristotle’s Metaphysics.
Examples of what we might consider normal artist activities: painting, music, sculpting, dance, etc.
Alejandro Llano, Gnoseology, trans. David Sands (Manila: Sinag-Tala Publishers, INC., 2001), 29
ibid.
ibid., 30
ibid., 32
For a better understanding of the reasoning involved here, look into the four causes of Aristotle: material, formal, agent, and final. Here I am directly referencing the final cause.
In science this is understood in the Law of Conservation of Energy. Matter and energy can be transformed in the equation e=mc2, but never destroyed or created. Philosophically, for us to create substantially would mean that we have caused more substantial existence than ourselves to exist. That is illogical.
Creation is properly the act of giving substantial being, while construction is the act of manipulating existing being.
Not in a Socratic sense, but instead that we have to first experience a form in reality to have a concept of that form. Also, because we can only be moved to a create by a known form, that form must first have originated in reality in some way.
A clean slate. This phrase comes from St. Thomas Aquinas quoting Aristotle.
In an analogical sense of creation when applied to accidental modes of being.
It should be noted that this imagined existence is only in our intellect, not in the world beyond. Things imagined are of a lesser being than those things which exist in reality.
Llano, 21
To put it another way, God in being the first cause of all, is the creator of all things.

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