Knowledge and Inquiry 'Art has no real value to societies.

' Critically examine, with reference, in particular, to aesthetics, how the concept of value applies to knowledge. Introduction: Aesthetics is usually characterised by presenting a message in an indirect way. Abstraction, romanticism, recounting a situation that produces a message. Eg. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee criticises racism not by offering direct arguments on why it is detrimental, but rather protraying a situation where the racists are seen to act dishonestly and violently while Atticus Finch, who defends the black man, is seen as a moral figure. The audience then infers that racism is deplorable through this. However, it is argued that aesthetics is simply an indirect way of attaining knowledge that, at best, does not add any value to the message it is trying to send, and at worst, completely obscures any possibility of gaining knowledge from it. This statement can be used to examine what the concept of value is in knowledge. Implicit Argument: The concept of valuable knowledge is usually seen to be knowledge that is both true and useful, of which aesthetics is argued not to provide any. Plato Art is a copy of a copy. Real world objects and phenomenon are a copy universals. (eg. A table is a copy of the form of a table. The act of stealing is a copy of the form of greed and vice) Art attempts to copy these objects and phenomenon. This causes art to detract from the truth twice, thus making it a far more inaccurate representation of universals, hindering its ability to provide truth. At the same time, since art is mere imitation then it does not provide any new knowledge that could not have been obtained by observing whatever art seeked to copy. Hence, any potential knowledge provided by art is not useful. Baumgarten also argued that aesthetics should be modelled after science, providing 'sensible discourse' through 'sensible representations'. In this case, Baumgarten believes that abstraction, exaggeration, symbolism,

romanticism etc add no value to aesthetics whatsoever. However, this simply reduces aesthetics to mere argumentation and discourse; it is the same as saying that whatever makes aesthetics aesthetic should be rejected and is of no value. Hence, the claim tells us that the concept of value in knowledge can be seen as one that provides certainty in truth, and practical utility that provides unique knowledge of its own. Anti-thesis: However, value is not restricted to traditional concepts of truth and utility. There are several other ways in which knowledge can be made more valuable by aesthetics, and ways in which aesthetics can provide knowledge that should be considered unique and valuable: 1. Clarity In the Cartesian sense of the word, an idea that is clear is one that an attentive mind cannot help but notice. While art is usually seen to be less distinct due to its abstraction and indirectness, it can provide clarity. According to Gottsched, art portrays moral truth in a way that is concrete, alive and effective. A moral truth expressed in argumentation may not be clear due to motivation externalism. For instance, one might argue that oppressing blacks out of racism is immoral, but this contains little instrinsic motivational power and as a result is easy to ignore. To Kill the Mockingbirds, however, portrays the immorality of this racism by instigating hatred towards the racists in the book, making this moral proposition far more motivating and difficult to ignore. Hence, it provides clarity. This adds value to moral knowledge because it allows it to fulfil its normative function of actively convincing people to act by it. 2. An emotional dimension to knowledge According to Aristotle, art primarily provides catharsis, which gives us the ability to engage with the full spectrum of our emotions, especially the negative ones, without having to suffer from them. Likewise, Kant argues that judgements of beauty and any resulting knowledge is produced from our feelings and not cognition. This results in knowledge that is highly emotional in nature.

 For instance, pathos is a literary technique that seeks to espouse pity and sorrow in the reader for a character to improve empathy and understanding. An emotional dimension makes knowledge more valuable because it allows us to understand ourselves better. Eg. Emotions affect how passionate we are about our beliefs. Aesthetics allows us to realise the value of emotions in knowledge. 3. Beauty is a valuable form of knowledge. According to Wolff, beauty is a manifestation of god's perfection. Art allows us to better understand beauty, and hence perfection. According to Roger Scruton, beauty provides order and meaning in a chaotic world. Even if there does not appear to be any outward practical value, beauty is usually seen to be highly desirable, pleasurable or even fulfilling. Even scientists and mathematicians some times admit that they are motivated by hoping to find out more about the beauty in our universe, instead of any clear practical end. Aesthetics makes the value that beauty adds to knowledge clearer than in any other field. Conclusion: Aesthetics is by no means valueless, and from appreciating its value we can in fact learn a lot more about what makes something valuable to knowledge.