Finding What Will Suffice: Stevens and the Post-Hegelian Evaluation of Art

Abstract

HILOSOPHY'S REPEATED ATTEMPTS to deduce art's cognitive value have led to a plethora of conflicting conclusions. Jerome Stol- nitz's essay On the Cognitive Triviality of Art is a prime example of the skeptical position within the debate. There are two aspects of this position that I find fundamentally misguided and unhelpful to our ongo- ing endeavor to gauge the value of art: first, that it attempts to evaluate art using the truth standards of philosophy, and second, that it views art as a static entity with a fixed function and cognitive value. In what follows, I intend to show how the universalizing conclusions engendered by this view are an impediment to our discovering the hidden wealth with which art endows particular cultures. Thus, the purpose of my contribution is to demonstrate two key theses: a) that art is capable of providing a form of cognitive value distinct from that of philosophy; and b) that the predominant criteria by which art is as- sessed for cognitive value ought to be viewed as historically determined. To support these claims, I will adduce the aesthetic theories of both the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the poet Wallace Stevens. Although the thought of these two figures has already been the subject of a number of comparative studies—more particularly within Stevens criticism—a full comparison of their aesthetic theories has not yet been undertaken. 1 Hence, the first section of my essay offers a comparative ex- position of their respective arguments concerning how ideal art is capable of providing a sui generis form of cognitive value. Here I focus on Hegel's conception of beauty and on what Stevens calls the supreme fiction. The second section argues that art's ability to fulfill these ideals and its hierarchical relation to both philosophy and religion are historically deter- mined. To develop this point, I examine Hegel's historical account of the development of fine art and Stevens' thesis that poetry has compensated for the waning relevance of religion in the modern world. In my final sec- tion, I argue that Hegel's and Stevens' conflicting ideals can be reconciled, up to a point, if they are understood as separated by what I call a criterial shift.