Robert B. Pippin - Philosophy by Other Means: The Arts in Philosophy and Philosophy in the Arts

ROBERT B. PIPPIN

The University of Chicago Press

Chicago and London

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

2021 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637.

Published 2021

Printed in the United States of America

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ISBN -13: 978-0-226-77077-2 (cloth)

ISBN -13: 978-0-226-77080-2 (paper)

ISBN -13: 978-0-226-77094-9 (e-book)

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226770949.001.0001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Pippin, Robert B., 1948 author.

Title: Philosophy by other means : the arts in philosophy and philosophy in the arts / Robert B. Pippin.

Other titles: Arts in philosophy and philosophy in the arts

Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020040729 | ISBN 9780226770772 (cloth) | ISBN 9780226770802 (paperback) | ISBN 9780226770949 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH : Aesthetics. | ArtsPhilosophy. | LiteraturePhilosophy.

Classification: LCC BH 21 . P 57 2021 | DDC 111/.85dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020040729

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z 39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

What follows is an attempt to develop an approach to understanding aesthetic objects. The approach is a form of criticism that I want to call philosophical, a contribution to philosophy, even if not in the analytic and discursive form traditionally characteristic of academic philosophy. The claim is twofold: that criticism properly understood often requires a form of philosophic reflection, and that philosophy is impoverished if it is not informed by critical attention to aesthetic objects. Misunderstandings are inevitable in this context. A philosophical illumination of artworks and a philosophy illuminated by attention to artworks are not offered as a delimitation of the only or main value of the arts. The arts are valuable for all sorts of reasons: enjoyment, play, beauty, or simply as an enrichment of the human experience of the human. Different works have different ambitions, some closer to the ambition of craftsmanship, some closer to the ambitions of mythology. This notion of philosophical illumination applies where it does and doesnt apply where it doesnt. Ill begin by trying to contextualize the project.

This volume is a continuation of attempts made in other work, in four books on film Hollywood Westerns and American Myth(2010), Fatalism in American Film Noir(2012), The Philosophical Hitchcock(2017), and Filmed Thought(2019)in an earlier work on literature,