Philosophers From The United States

"The color is of the object and the object in all its qualities is expressed through color. For it is objects that glows— gems and sunlight; and it is objects that are splendid— crowns, robes, sunlight. Except as they express objects, through being the significant color-quality of materials of ordinary experience, colors effect only transient excitations."

"In all ranges of experience, externality of means defines the mechanical."

"All the cases in which means and ends are external to one another are non-esthetic."

"Such external or mere means, as we properly term them, are usually of such a sort that others can be substituted for them; the particular ones employed are determined by some extraneous consideration, like cheapness. But the moment we say “media”, we refer to means that are incorporated in the outcome. Even bricks and mortar become part of the house they are employed to build; they are not mere means to its erection. Colors are the painting; tones are the music. A picture painted with water colors has a quality different from that painted with oil. Esthetic effects belong intrinsically to their medium; when another medium is substituted, we have a stunt rather than an object of art. Even when substitution is practiced with the utmost virtuosity or for any reason outside the kind of end desired, the product is mechanical or a tawdry sham — like boards painted to resemble stone in the construction of a cathedral, for stone is integral not just physically, but to the esthetic effect."

"In ordinary visual perception, we see by means of light; we distinguish by means of reflected and refracted colors. But in ordinary perception, this medium of color is mixed, adulterated. While we see, we also hear; we feel pressures, and heat and cold. In a painting, color renders the scene without these alloys and impurities. They are part of the dross that is squeezed out and left behind in an act of intensified expression. The medium becomes color alone, and since color alone must now carry the qualities of movement, touch, sound, etc., that are present physically on their own account in ordinary vision, the expressiveness and energy of color are enhanced."

"Coleridge said that every work of art must have about it something not understood to obtain its full effect."

"Even at the outset, the total and massive quality has its uniqueness; even when vague and undefined, it is just that which it is and not anything else. If the perception continues, discrimination inevitably sets in. Attention must move, and as it moves, parts, members, emerge from the background. And if attention moves in a unified direction instead of wandering, it is controlled by the pervading qualitative unity; attention is controlled by it because it operates within it."

"Artist and perceiver alike begin with what may be called a total seizure, an inclusive qualitative whole not yet articulated, not distinguished into members."

"Interest only becomes one-sided and morbid only when it ceases to be frank, and becomes sly and furtive."

"No work of art can be instantaneously perceived because there is the no opportunity for conservation and increase in tension, and hence none for that release and unfolding which gives volume to a work of art."

"Because energy is not restrained by other elements that are at once antagonistic and cooperative, action proceeds by jerks and spasms. There is discontinuity."

"In most cases the esthetic objection to doses of morals and of economic or political propaganda in works of art will be found upon analysis to reside in the over-weighing of certain values at the expense of others until, except for those in a similar stare of one-sides enthusiasm, weariness rather than refreshment sets in."

"Equally there is no rhythm when variations are not placed. There is a wealth of suggestions in the phrase “takes place”. The change not only comes but it belongs; it had its definite place in a larger whole."

"The true antithesis of nature is not art but arbitrary conceit, fantasy, and stereotyped convention."

"Because rhythm is a universal scheme of existence, underlying all realization of order in change, it pervades all the arts, literary, musical, plastic and architectural, as well as the dance. Since man succeeds only as he adapts his behavior to the order of nature, his achievements and victories, as they ensue upon resistance and struggle, become the matrix of all esthetic subject-matter; in some sense they constitute the common pattern of art, the ultimate conditions of form. Their cumulative orders of succession become without express intent the means by which man commemorates and celebrates the most intense and full moments of his experience. Underneath the rhythm of every art and every work of art there lies, as a substratum in the depths of the subconsciousness, the basic pattern of the relations of the live creature to his environment."

"Naturalism is a word of many meetings in philosophy as well as in art. like most isms — classicism and romanticism, idealism and realism in art — it’s has become an emotional term, a war cry of partisans."

"Well both original seizure and subsequent critical discrimination have equal claims, each to its own complete development and must not be forgotten that direct and unreasoned impression comes first. There is such occasions something of the quality of the wind that bloweth where it listeth. Sometimes it comes and sometimes it does not, even in the presence of the same object. It cannot be forced and when it does not arrive it is not wise to seek to recover by direct action the first fine rapture."

"What happens in the movement of art is emergence of new materials of experience demanding expression, and therefore involving in their expression new forms and techniques."

"There can be no movement toward a consummating close unless there is a progressive massing of values, a cumulative effect. This result cannot exist without conservation of the import of what has gone before. Moreover, to secure the needed continuity, the accumulated experience must be such as to create suspense and anticipation of resolution. Accumulation is at the same time preparation, as with each phase of the growth of a living embryo. Only that is carried on which is led to; otherwise there is arrest and a break. For this reason consummation is relative; instead of occurring once for all at a given point, it is recurrent. The final end is anticipated by rhythmic pauses, while that end is final only in an external way. For as we turn from reading a poem or novel or seeing a picture the effect presses forward in further experiences, even if only subconsciously."

"Matisse has described the actual process of painting in the following way: “if, on a clean canvas, i put interval patches of blue, green and red, with every touch that I put on, each of those previously laid on loses in importance. Say I have to paint an interior; I see before me a wardrobe. It gives me a vivid sensation of red; I put on the canvas the particular res that satisfies me. A relation is now established between this red and the paleness of the canvas. When I put on besides a green, and also a yellow to represent the floor, between this green and yellow and the color of the canvas there will be still further relations. But these different tones diminish one another. It is necessary that the different tones I use be balances in such a way that they do not destroy one another. To secure that, I have to out my ideas in order; the relationships between tones must be instituted in such a way that they are built up instead of being knocked down. A new combination of colors will succeed to the first one and will give the wholeness of my conception.”"

"Art expresses, it does not state; it is concerned with existences in their perceived qualities, not with conceptions symbolized in terms."

"“Relation” in its idiomatic usage denotes something direct and active, something dynamic and energetic. It fixes attention upon the way things bear upon one another, their clashings and unitings, the way they fulfill and frustrate, promote and retard, excite and inhibit one another. Intellectual relations subsist in propositions; they state the connection of terms with one another. In art, as in nature and in life, relations are modes of interaction."

"Even the eye that is artificially trained to see color as color, apart from things that colors qualify, cannot shut out the resonances and transfers of value."

"There are in our minds in solution a vast number of emotional attitudes, feelings ready to be re-excited when the proper stimulus arrives, and more than anything else it is these forms, this residue of experience, which, fuller and richer than in the mind if the ordinary man, constitute the artist’s capital. What is called the magic of the artist resides in his ability to transfer these values from one field of experience to another, to attach them to objects of our common life, and by his imaginative insight make these objects poignant and momentous. Not colors, not sense qualities as such, are either matter or form, but these qualities as thoroughly imbued, impregnated, with transferred value. And then they are either matter or form according to the direction of our interest."

"I do not think that the dancing and singing of even little children can be explained wholly on the basis of unlearned and unformed responses to then existing objective conditions. Clearly there must be something in the present to evoke happiness. But the act is expressive only a there is in it a unison of something stored from past experience, something therefore generalized, with present conditions. In the case of expressions of happy children the marriage of past values and present incidents takes place easily; there are few obstructions to be overcome, few wounds to heal, few conflicts to resolve. With maturer persons, the reverse is the case. Accordingly the achievement of complete unison is rare; but when it occurs it is so on a deeper level and with a fuller content of meaning. And then, even though after long incubation and after precedent pangs of labor, the final expression may issue with the spontaneity of the cadenced speech or rhythmic movement of happy childhood."

"The determination of the mot juste, of the right incident in the right place, of exquisiteness of proportion, of the precise tone, hue, and shade that helps unify the whole while it defines a part, is accomplished by emotion. Not every emotion, however, can do this work, but only one informed by material that is grasped and gathered. Emotion is informed and carried forward when it is spent indirectly in search for material and in giving it order, not when it is directly expended."

"In the development of an expressive act, the emotion operates like a magnet drawing to itself appropriate material: appropriate because it has an experienced emotional affinity for the state of mind already moving. Selection and organization of material are at once a function and a test of the quality of the emotion experienced. In seeing a drama, beholding a picture, or reading a novel, we may feel that the parts do not hang together. Either the maker had no experience that was emotionally toned, or, although having at the outset a felt emotion, it was not sustained, and a succession of unrelated emotions dictated the work. In the latter case, attention wavered and shifted, and an assemblage of incongruous parts ensued. The sensitive observer or reader is aware of junctions and seams, of holes arbitrarily filled in. Yes, emotion must operate. But it works to effect continuity of movement, singleness of effect amid variety. It is selective of material and directive of its order and arrangement. But it is not what is expressed. Without emotion, there may be craftsmanship, but not art; it may be present and be intense, but if it is directly manifested the result is also not art."

"Just because emotion is essential to that act of expression which produces a work of art, it is easy for inaccurate analysis to misconceive its mode of operation and conclude that the work of art has emotion for its significant content. One may cry out with joy or even weep upon seeing a friend from whom one has been long separated. The outcome is not an expressive object -- save to the onlooker. But if the emotion leads one to gather material that is affiliated to the mood which is aroused, a poem may result. In the direct outburst, an objective situation is the stimulus, the cause, of the emotion. In the poem, objective material becomes the content and matter of the emotion, not just its evocative occasion."

"In reading a novel, even one written by an expert craftsman, one may get a feeling early in the story that hero or heroine is doomed, doomed not by anything inherent in situations and character but by the intent of the author who makes the character a puppet to set forth his own cherished idea. The painful feeling that results is resented not because it is painful but because it is foisted upon us by something that we feel comes from outside the movement of the subject matter. A work may be much more tragic and yet leave us with an emotion of fulfillment instead of irritation. We are reconciled to the conclusion because we feel it is inherent in the movement of the subject matter portrayed. The incident is tragic but the world in which such fateful things happen is not an arbitrary and imposed world. The emotion of the author and that aroused in us are occasioned by scenes in that world and they blend with subject matter. It is for similar reasons that we are repelled by the intrusion of a moral design in literature while we esthetically accept any amount of moral content if it is held together by a sincere emotion that controls the material. A white flame of pity or indignation may find material that feeds it and it may fuse everything assembled into a vital whole."

"So we are always esthetically disappointed when the sensuous qualities and the intellectual properties of an object do not coalesce."

"This intelligence-testing business reminds me of the way they used to weigh hogs in Texas. They would get a long plank, put it over a cross-bar, and somehow tie the hog on one end of the plank. They'd search all around till they found a stone that would balance the weight of the hog and they'd put that on the other end of the plank. Then they'd guess the weight of the stone."

"Democracy means the belief that humanistic culture should prevail."

"Legislation is a matter of more or less intelligent improvisation aiming at palliating conditions by means of patchwork policies."

"As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance."

"Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination."

"While they denounce as subversive anarchy signs of independent thought, of thinking for themselves on the part of others lest such thought disturb the conditions by which they profit, they think quite literally for themselves, that is of themselves."

"It is no accident that all democracies have put a high estimate upon education; that schooling has been their first care and enduring charge. Only through education can equality of opportunity be anything more than a phrase. Accidental inequalities of birth, wealth, and learning are always tending to restrict the opportunities of some as compared with those of others. Only free and continued education can counteract those forces which are always at work to restore, in however changed a form, feudal oligarchy. Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife."

"We have to a considerable extent, given up thinking of this life as merely a preparation for another life. Very largely, however, we think of some parts of this life as merely preparatory to other later stages of it. It is so very largely as to the process of education; and if I were asked to name the most needed of all reforms in the spirit of education, I should say: 'Cease conceiving of education as mere preparation for later life, and make it the full meaning of the present life.' And to add that only in this case does it become truly a preparation for after life is not the paradox it seems. An activity which does not have worth enough to be carried on for its own sake cannot be very effective as a preparation for something else. By making the present activity the expression of the full meaning of the case, that activity is, indeed, an end in itself, not a mere means to something beyond itself; but, in being a totality, it is also the condition of all future integral action. It forms the habit of requiring that every act be an outlet of the whole self, and it provides the instruments of such complete functioning."

"Futurists falter because they belittle the power of religious paradigms, deeming them either too literal or too fantastic."

"Gilder's analysis saddened me considerably. Despite the romantic propaganda about male homosexual relationships, it is, in fact, agonizing for most of its practitioners. Lasting relationships are few and sour. Gratifications are brief and squalid- "gay" bars, street cruises, forlorn personal advertisements. These do not afford the kind of love the homosexual needs. Gilder warns that heterosexual society should not praise or affirm the homosexual alternatives or acquiesce to their propaganda. It is tragic if the cultural surroundings provide more easily for homosexuality than for recovery of normal patterns. Cities like Miami, which would give in to homosexual demands, are doing the homosexuals no favor. It is far better to help an individual recover from his dejection- whatever has led him into such a debased way of life- restore his confidence, and help him return to full heterosexuality. A society that condones homosexual behavior is a society that is uncaring, for it is allowing an individual to fall prey to sexual self-destruction."

"He describes homosexuality as a "flight from identity and love," the "gay liberation" movement as an "escape from sexual responsibility and its display a threat to millions of young men who have precarious masculine identities." Women's liberation he looks upon as a destructive fantasy. "There are no human beings; there are just men and women, and when they deny their divergent sexuality, they reject the deepest sources of identity and love. They commit sexual suicide." The More I read, the more sick at heart I became and the fighting spirit within me grew. I had to look up words and terms- this was a whole new area of thinking for me. "Oh, dear Lord, has this been going on all around me? I've been so indifferent, so careless..." Because I knew my Bible I recognized the perils of homosexuality. But even if one did not know or accept the Word of God, common sense indicates that homosexuality is against nature and not normal and therefore not to be encouraged."

"George F. Gilder has written an important book called Sexual Suicide in which he examines a wealth of anthropological, economic, social, and psychological data. He then proceeds to explain why family breakdown is the chief cause of the problems that have come down with such force upon our country in recent years. The women's-liberation programs- many of them fostered by women with lesbian tendencies- have weakened family ties and worsened these problems. Gilder points to statistics that prove single men are the chief source of crime and social disruption. He argues convincingly that marriage is essential to male socialization in the modern world."

"The question thus becomes: Will the scientists and women's liberationists be able to unleash on the world a generation of kinless children to serve as the Red Guards of a totalitarian state? Will we try to reproduce the Nazi experiment, when illegitimacy was promoted by the provision of lavish nursing homes and the state usurped the provider male. Or will we manage to maintain our most indispensable condition of civilization- and obstacle to totalitarian usurpation- the human marriage and family."

"The chief attraction of homosexual activity is that it does not require confidence or male identity or even face-to-face self-exposure. It can even be informed without an erection. It is thus an inviting escape for the fallen male. Nonetheless, actual homosexuality is by no means inevitable in such cases. A man can recover from his dejection, restore hos confidence, and return to full heterosexuality. This is the usual course of events. It is tragic, therefore, if the cultural ambience provides more easily for homosexuality than for recover of normal patterns. In many parts of urban America this tragedy is a way of life."

"While there are many people who accept the romantic propaganda about male homosexual existence, the life of tricks and trades is in fact agonizing for most of its practitioners. Lasting relationships are few and sour. The usual circuit of gay bars, returning servicemen, forlorn personal advertisements, and street cruises affords gratifications so brief and squalid that the society should do everything it can to prevent the spread of the disease. This emphatically does not mean harassing or imprisoning homosexuals. In fact, the worst perversion occasioned by homosexuality is the police practice of entraptment. But at the same time it is crucial to affirm precarious males of their heterosexuality. Natural compassion for men who are already homosexual- and our recognition that men who are already homosexual- and our recognition that some have adjusted happily- should not lead us to praise or affirm the homosexual alternative or to acquiesce in its propaganda."

"American society is already hospitable to passive and effeminate males. What they need is affirmation as men so that their existing androgyny does not lead to sexual suicide; to impotence and homosexuality. Contrary to the feminist view, the latitude of the two sexes is not the same. While women can venture into the masculine sphere without grave damage and can even indulge in occasional lesbianism, the greater sexual insecurity of males makes it more difficult and unsettling for them to engage in female roles. Homosexuality, moreover, can inflict permanent damage on their sexual identities. Because males must bear the burdens of initiation and performance in sexual activity, a homosexual fixation is often permanent. A man cannot be easily rescued by an aggressive woman."

"The fact is that there seems to be virtually no chance of arresting the trend toward the integration of all sexually segregated schools. Young people are being immersed, if that is the word, in the shallow currents of reciprocal sex at an ever earlier age. It seems that by denying the Holy Ghost his six inches in the schools, one dooms most of society to just that measure of sexual fulfillment."

"Let us begin with a few simple, crucial, and apparently unmentionable facts about a typical high school classroom. First and most important, most of the boys and a good number of the girls are thinking about the opposite sex most of the time. If you do not believe this, you are a dreamer. The only thing about a classroom more important to adolescent boys than whether girls are present is whether or not it is on fire. Advocates of coeducation will tell you that the boys are learning to regard the girls as "human beings" rather than as sexual objects. These are the kinds of people who imagine that most males anywhere, under any circumstances- short of affliction by senility, homosexuality, or Bella Abzug- ever refrain from regarding females as sexual objects. These are the "imaginative" types of people who run our schools. They tend to think that their sexual interest in budding adolescent girls is their own secret perversion. It happens to be shared by the boys in the school (as well as by all the other male teachers). If the educator is particularly creative and imaginative, he will suppose that these young "human beings" are learning a lot about life in their work together. What in fact the boys are learning is that unless they are exceptionally "bright' and obedient, they will be exceeded in their studies by most of the girls. Unless you are imaginative, you will see that this is a further drag on their already faltering attention to Longfellow's Evangeline. Clearly in a losing game in masculine terms, the boys react in two ways: They put on a show for the girls and dominate the class anyway, or they drop out. Enough of them eventually drop out, in fact, to disguise the otherwise decided statistical superiority of female performance in school. But they do not drop out soon enough to suit educators for whom aggressive boys are the leading problem in every high school."

"This intuition of mysterious new realms of sexual and social experience, evoked by the body and spirit of woman, is the source of male love and ultimately of marriage. In evoking marriages love renders the woman transparent: The man sees through her, in a vision freighted with sexual desire, to the child they might have together. For it is a child that he might have only if he performs a role: only if he can offer, in exchange for the intense inner sexual meanings she imparts, an external realm of meaning, sustenance, and protection in which the child could be safely born. Both partners consciously or unconsciously glimpse a future infant- precarious in the womb, vulnerable in the world, and in need of nurture and protection. In the sweat of their bodies together, in the shape and softnesses of the woman, in the protective support of the man, the couple senses the outlines of a realm that can endure and perpetuate their union. At the deepest level, therefore, love and marriage are based on this complementary pattern. The man's most profound and indispensable life must be experienced through the woman; she is the master of their sexuality. Meanwhile the woman's external existence will to some extent be sustained and protected by the man; he gives space for their worldly haven. This may be the very essence of a closed marriage but it is the essence of the institution itself."

"Marriage is not simply a ratification of an existing love. It is the conversion of that love into a biological and social continuity transcending any two individuals. The very essence of such continuity is children- now fewer than before but retained far longer within the family bounds. Regardless of whether a particular couple is getting married for the companionship or psychoindustrial energy or sexual massage, one must separate the professed motives of the individuals from deeper sexual and evolutionary propensities. All sorts of superficial deviations and distortions- from homosexual marriage to companionate partnership- can be elaborated on the primal foundations of human life. But the foundations remain. The natural fulfillment of love is a child, and the fantasies and projects of the childless couple may well be considered as surrogate children. The essential pattern is clear. Women manipulate male sexual desire in order to teach them the long-term cycles of female sexuality and biology on which civilization is based. When men learn, their view of the woman as an object of their own sexuality succumbs to an image of her as the bearer of a richer and more extended eroticism and as the keeper of the portals of social immorality. She becomes a way to lend elaborate continuity and meaning to the limited erotic compulsions of the male."