The Social Impact of

the Arts
An Intellectual History

Eleonora Belfiore and Oliver Bennett

The Social Impact of the Arts
Also available by Oliver Bennett

CULTURAL PESSIMISM: Narratives of Decline in the Postmodern World

INTELLECTUALS AND CULTURAL POLICY (co-editor with Jeremy Ahearne)
The Social Impact
of the Arts
An Intellectual History

Eleonora Belfiore and Oliver Bennett

© Eleonora Belfiore and Oliver Bennett 2008
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2008 978-0-230-57255-3

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Belfiore, Eleonora, 1975–
The social impact of the arts : an intellectual history / Eleonora
Belfiore and Oliver Bennett.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Arts and society. 2. Intellectual life—History. I. Bennett,
Oliver. II. Title.
NX180.S6B43 2008
700.190309—dc22 2008016164
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08
Contents

Foreword vii

Acknowledgements viii

Introduction 1

1 Towards a New Approach to Researching the

Social Impacts of the Arts 13
Defining the terms of the debate 16
On the pitfalls of ‘Eurocentrism’ 25
On the distinction between ‘high’
and ‘low’ culture 32
Identifying categories of ‘functions’ of the arts 35

2 Corruption and Distraction 40

Metaphysical arguments 41
Epistemological arguments 42
Psychological arguments 53

3 Catharsis 79
Moralistic/didactic catharsis 81
Emotional fortitude 83
Moderation 84
Emotional release 85
Intellectual catharsis 88
Dramatic or structural catharsis 90

4 Personal Well-Being 92
Pleasure and enjoyment 92
Relief from ‘will’ 93
In work and in leisure 96
Fulfilled time 97
Art as ‘experience’ 98
Art as play 99
Evolutionary significance 100
Art therapy 102

v
vi Contents

5 Education and Self-Development 107

The influence of Horace 109
Renaissance elaborations 111
Bildung 115
Modern elaborations 120

6 Moral Improvement and Civilisation 124

Aristotle and Horace 124
French Enlightenment 127
Kant 129
Romanticism 130
Matthew Arnold 134
F. R. Leavis 137
The arts and colonialism 141

7 Political Instrument 146

Fascism and Nazism 148
‘Governmentalisation of culture’ 151
The ‘committed’ novel 155
Political theatre 161

8 Social Stratification and Identity Construction 165

9 Autonomy of the Arts and Rejection

of Instrumentality 176
The significance of Kant 178
Nineteenth-century aestheticism 182
Twentieth-century elaborations 184

Conclusion 191

Notes 196

References 215

Index 235
Foreword

This book offers an intellectual history of claims made over time for the
value, function and impact of the arts. Drawing on a wide range of liter-
ary, philosophical and political texts, from Classical Greece to the
present day, it identifies and explores both ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ tra-
ditions of thinking about the arts. With chapters on corruption, cathar-
sis, education and ‘art for art’s sake’, as well as a number of other key
themes, the book examines the many different ways in which the value
of the arts have been articulated. It suggests that an understanding of
how certain ideas have evolved over time into commonplace beliefs is
essential to any serious investigation of the place of the arts in modern
societies. At the same time, it attempts to reconnect contemporary
policy debates with a complex intellectual history, from which it is
argued that these debates have become detached.

vii
Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to the Arts and Humanities and
Research Council (AHRC) and Arts Council England (ACE) for co-funding
the Fellowship that has made this research possible. We are also grateful
for the support, encouragement and constructive feedback of the staff
and research students at the Centre for Cultural Policy Studies at the
University of Warwick. Many thanks go also to the members of our
Advisory Group for their insights and advice: Catherine Bunting (ACE),
Lisa Hill (AHRC), Professor Jim Davis (University of Warwick),
Dr Jonathan Vickery (University of Warwick), Dr Jeremy Ahearne
(University of Warwick), Dr Sheila Galloway (University of Warwick),
Professor Robert Lindley (University of Warwick), Dr Jonothan Neelands
(University of Warwick), Professor Sara Selwood (City University).

viii
Introduction

In most parts of the world, the arts1 are subject to the attentions of a
large number of social institutions. They are taught in schools, where
their study and practice are seen as a desirable, if not essential, part of a
child’s education. They form part of the school curriculum and are
deemed suitable subjects for examination and qualifications. They are
often assigned great importance by middle-class parents, who encour-
age their children to read serious novels, take up musical instruments or
enrol in out-of-school drama and dance classes.
At university level, students worldwide and on a vast scale study
novels, poems, paintings and artistic performances of all kinds. In Japan,
for example, the number of graduates in arts and humanities subjects
rose from 22,523 in 1957 to 163,928 in 2005; in Britain, from 26,845 to
97,465; and in France, from 3242 to 82,878.2 Academics are employed to
teach these students, usually with the support of government funds, and
to add to the ever-growing body of arts research. New artists and per-
formers pour out of the world’s training schools each year. The art critic,
Suzi Gablik, once calculated that in the United States alone the educa-
tional system produced as many graduate artists every five years as there
were people in fifteenth-century Florence (1984, 100).
Most nations in the world now have government departments that
promote and support the arts. Many of them also have Arts Councils,
which have either been given the role of distributing government funds
to the arts or of advising on how it should be done. According to the
International Federation of Arts Councils and Cultural Agencies
(IFACCA 2007), which identified 116 national arts funding bodies to
invite to its inaugural meeting in December 2000, there has been ‘an
explosion of council-like or foundation-like agencies [...] in poor as well
as wealthy nations’.

1
2 Introduction

As well as the Arts Councils and Ministries of Culture, there are, of

course, all the artists and institutions they support: the arts centres,
theatres, museums, galleries, concert-halls and festivals of various
kinds. In 1991 Susan Pearce calculated that the number of museums
alone amounted to around 23,000 worldwide (1991, vii). By now, the
number will be far higher. In China, for example, the number of muse-
ums more than doubled between 1990 and 2007, rising from 1012 to
2200 (People’s Daily Online 2007). Then there are the so-called creative
or cultural industries, which encompass not only the multinational
entertainment corporations but also the constantly shifting landscape
of small creative enterprises. These are often represented as one of the
fastest growing sectors of the economy. In Britain, for example, in 2007,
they were said by Tony Blair (2007) to account for more than 7 per cent
of the economy and to be growing faster than the economy as a
whole.3
The arts also occupy a prominent position in upmarket newspapers.
Most produce supplements devoted to the arts and culture and many
have specialist arts editors. Universities, such as Columbia and
Syracuse in the United States, now offer academic programmes in arts
journalism. The arts are one of the mandatory ‘genres’ of public serv-
ice broadcasting. Organisations like the BBC are compelled, under the
conditions of their licence, to include the arts in their programme
schedules.
Why is it that the arts have come to occupy this position in modern
societies? What is it about them that attracts the support of govern-
ments, legitimises their place in educational institutions and demands
the attention of the media? Much has been made in recent years of their
contribution to the economy, their relation to ‘innovation’ and their
place at the heart of the so-called ‘creative industries’ (Work Foundation
2007; Doust 2005). But even those who argue this case most strongly
will usually concede that the economic role is secondary to something
much more fundamental (Crossick 2006, 1). This is frequently expressed
in terms of the capacity of the arts to transform the lives not just of
individuals but of whole communities.
Mike Huckabee, for example, a former Governor of Arkansas and
Chair of the prestigious US Education Commission of the States,4
maintains that it was his ‘understanding of the transformative power of
the arts’ that led him to place the arts in education at the top of the ECS
agenda during his period of office (ECS 2007). ‘Challenge America’, one
of the flagship projects of the National Endowment for the Arts, prom-
ises to ‘strengthen American communities through the unique power of
 Introduction 3

the arts’ (NEA 2002). Arts Council England (2003, 2) tells us that ‘the
arts have the power to transform lives and communities.’ One of the
core values of Arts Council Korea (2007) is to promote lives ‘enriched
and transformed by art’. The non-profit cultural development agency
Culture Montréal (2007) is ‘dedicated to promoting the transformative
power of the arts for individuals and communities’.
The ‘cultural exception’ provisions of the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade, which were agreed at the conclusion of the Uruguay
Round of negotiations in 1993, were a political expression at the highest
level of the special status accorded to artistic culture. Through these
provisions, nation states were permitted to take measures to protect
their arts, film and broadcasting industries from the free trade disci-
plines that would otherwise be imposed by the GATT. In the course of
these negotiations, the French President, François Mitterand, observed
that ‘[w]hat is at stake is the cultural identity of all our nations [...] A
society which abandons the means of depicting itself would soon be an
enslaved society’ (in Shapiro 2000, 11).
This link between the arts and cultural identity is a concern not only
of the French government. In a speech in 2002, the Canadian ballet
dancer, Karen Kain, who was subsequently appointed as Chair of the
Canada Council for the Arts, declared that Canadian culture was
‘defined by the arts’ and if funding to the arts was cut, Canada risked
losing its cultural identity. Another member of the Canada Council, the
music educationalist, Susan Knight, describes herself as ‘intentionally
work[ing] through the transformative power of the arts to create com-
munity, nurture culture identity, promote leadership and consciously
develop critical agents of change’ (Canada Council for the Arts 2007).
In 2004, Knight was invested in the Order of Canada, Canada’s highest
civilian honour.
According to information posted around the world on its embassy
websites, the arts represent what is unique about New Zealand. Its art-
ists are represented as the ‘the guardians of its dreams’. Its creative
industries are said to be transforming the way in which New Zealand is
seen by the world.
In his book, Creative Britain, Chris Smith (1998, 49), the British
politician and New Labour’s first Minister of Culture, also made the
connection between the arts and cultural identity. Not only was the
artistic and cultural life of a society the ‘barometer of its health’ but it
was also ‘one of the main factors by which we assess a civilisation’. The
cultural life of a society, he went on to say, ‘is that which defines it and
gives it uniqueness and identity. It is the hallmark of maturity.’ Like
4 Introduction

Knight in Canada, Smith was also honoured, and elevated to the House
of Lords in 2005.
It is tempting to dismiss these narratives of transformation, in which
the arts change lives or define identity, as no more than rhetorical dis-
play or collective self-promotion. No doubt, in part, they are. But they
are repeated in so many different national and institutional contexts,
and often with a great deal of evangelical earnestness, that it is hard not
to see them as the product of widely and deeply held convictions.
Indeed, it is probably fair to say that a belief in the power of the arts to
transform lives for the better represents something close to orthodoxy
amongst advocates of the arts around the world.
However, at the same time, there is another narrative, one of crisis
and beleaguerment, which circulates with similar ubiquity and which
suggests that the arts are undervalued and in serious danger of collapse.5
In 1989, for example, writing in the Financial Times, Anthony Thorncroft
(1989) declared that the ‘British system is cracking up. The arts seem to
have been in crisis for years [...] The Secretary-General of the Arts
Council is convinced that doomsday has arrived.’ Fifteen years later, on
hearing that the Arts Council’s grant had been frozen after several
years of continuous growth under New Labour, another Arts Council
Secretary-General announced that the impact would be ‘devastating’
(in Higgins 2004). For the composer, Michael Berkeley, this freeze in
funding had powerful metaphorical resonances: ‘What’, he asked, ‘are
we – and history – to make of a socialism that freezes the creative sap of
an entire generation?’ (in Higgins and Kennedy 2004).
Ken Robinson, who chaired the National Advisory Committee on
Creative and Cultural Education6 in Britain before taking up a post as
Senior Advisor on Education Policy to the Getty Foundation in the United
States, also uses the language of devastation. In a published conversation
with Robert Morrison, founder and chairman of the US-based Music For
All Foundation, Robinson tells us that ‘arts programs are being devas-
tated in schools and school districts systems across America – perhaps not
intentionally, but systematically nonetheless’ (Education Commission of
the States 2005, 4). Indeed, according to Shauna Saunders (2005, 12) a
‘rhetoric of crisis’ has been running through public American debates on
the arts since the early 1970s. In his inaugural address, Dana Gioia (2007),
Chair of the US National Endowment for the Arts, declared that ‘[t]he loss
of recognition for artists, thinkers and scientists has impoverished our
culture in innumerable ways.’7
In the arts faculties of many universities, the suspicion lurks amongst
staff that arts departments are dispensable, at best tolerated and always
 Introduction 5

under threat. According to John Passmore, the philosopher and former

President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, it would be ‘a
complacent error’ to think that the apparent growth of arts facilities
signalled a recognition of the true value and importance of the arts.
‘There is many a university’, he wrote, ‘in which departments of litera-
ture and fine arts, although tolerated, are secretly despised, as consola-
tions reserved for the weak-minded, providing them with a “soft-option” ’
(Passmore 1991, 4).
In Italy, in response to proposals to reduce the arts budget as a part
of a wider programme of public expenditure cuts, the film-maker
Roberto Benigni lamented that ‘Italy is not interested in the arts any-
more [...] Culture is being undervalued more and more’ (in Arendt
2005, 22). According to Stephane Lissner, the artistic director of
La Scala, ‘the entire art world in Italy is in danger’ (Owen 2005, 52).
However, Sarah Zalfen (2007, 273) suggests in her study of European
opera that the problem is much wider, for ‘[t]he term “crisis” resounds
throughout the cultural sphere of Europe’.8
Of course, pronouncements of this kind are prompted by real situa-
tions and are often specifically designed, however naively, to embar-
rass governments into changing their policies or making more
favourable financial settlements. In this respect, they are no different
from the dire warnings that are issued from time to time in respect of
many other areas of public policy, such as health, defence or the prison
service. However, the arts occupy a particularly fragile position in pub-
lic policy, on account of the fact that the claims made for them, espe-
cially those relating to their transformative power, are extremely hard
to substantiate.
These difficulties have been exacerbated by the growing prominence
of evidence-based policy making. Originating in the medical field in
the 1990s, and subsequently spreading to all other areas of public pol-
icy, evidence-based policy making was intended to signal the end of
ideologically driven politics and to usher in a new era of pragmatism.
Policies would be based on whatever worked best rather than on any
predetermined political preference. Evidence would be gathered and
rigorously evaluated in order to asses the extent to which policies had
been effective in achieving the desired outcomes.
Whilst the ‘evidence base’ could be constituted from many kinds of
information, hard data, such as facts, trends and survey information,
were widely seen as the ‘gold standard’. Charlotte Humphreys and Ruth
Levitt from the UK’s Centre for Evidence Based Policy and Practice
(2007) have noted that ‘a hierarchy of the perceived quality and
6 Introduction

usefulness of evidence has emerged, [which] emphasises so-called

scientific approaches ahead of other methods in evaluation studies’. In
other words, the evidence that is most valued in evidence-based policy
is that which can be measured.
The production of measurable evidence that might throw light on the
claims made for the transformative power of the arts is particularly
problematic. For a start, the idea of transformation is so complex that it
is impossible to imagine how it might be reduced to a set of measurable
attributes. Moreover, even if it were, the number of potential factors
effecting the transformation would be so great that it would be
impossible to establish with any certainty that experiences of the arts
had been the root cause. The aesthetic encounter, above all, is an indi-
vidual subjective experience and, although it can be shown that certain
elements of this are historically and socially determined, there are very
real limitations to the extent to which further meaningful generalisa-
tions can be made.9
This to some extent explains the growth of economic and social
‘impact studies’, which have attempted to measure the impact of the
arts according to various predetermined indicators. The majority of
these studies have been commissioned or conducted in the spirit of
advocacy by agencies with an interest in the promotion or advance-
ment of the arts.10 Collectively, they have identified an enormous array
of impacts, often coinciding with the priorities of whichever govern-
ments are in power at the time.
The arts have therefore been variously represented as an expanding
sector of the economy, a major export earner and a stimulant to tour-
ism. They have been seen as a catalyst for urban renewal, a business
asset for a region and a cost-effective means of employment (Myerscough
et al. 1988). They have been said to promote social cohesion and com-
munity empowerment (Matarasso 1997). They are supposedly able to
reduce the prison population and improve health (Peaker and Vincent
1990; Staricoff 2004 and 2006); and they have even been seen as agents
of social stability and the renewal of civil society (Keaney 2006). As
Simon Brault (2004), Vice-Chair of the Canada Council for the Arts
observed in a speech to Federal-Provincial Culture Ministers, ‘all around
the world [...] there is a keen interest in the specific relationship between
arts and culture and the economic and social development of our
communities.’
There have been two problems with this. First, the advocacy agenda
that has underpinned most of these studies has blurred the bounda-
ries between advocacy and research. Instead of questioning whether
 Introduction 7

or not the arts actually do have the economic and social impacts
claimed for them, researchers have directed their efforts to coming up
with evidence that they do. As a consequence, impact studies have
suffered from methodological flaws, which have been subject to quite
extensive scholarly critique (e.g. Hughes 1989; Hansen 1995; van
Puffelen 1996; Belfiore 2002; Merli 2002). Most of these studies have
been conducted by consultants, but academics have also joined in.11
This has led to charges that the field is characterised not so much
by independent, critical researchers but more by ‘hired hands’
(Nielsen 1999).
Second, impact studies, focusing as they do on economic and social
indicators, do not actually engage with the real purpose of the arts.
Whatever economic contribution the arts might make, and however
much they might promote social cohesion and community empower-
ment, these are not the primary characteristics of the aesthetic experi-
ence. The arts may, as Simon Brault (2004) put it, be ‘routinely called to
the aid of ailing downtown cores, deserted or overpopulated urban
areas, or neighbourhoods torn apart by violence and poverty’. But, as
James Purnell (2007)12 has recently observed, ‘they would still matter if
they did none of those things. They are intrinsically valuable before
they are instrumentally so.’
The tensions between the so-called ‘intrinsic’ and ‘instrumental’ val-
ues of the arts have been played out particularly strongly in Britain,
where evidence-based policy making was vigorously pursued as part of
the implementation of the ‘third way’ politics that were the hallmark of
the New Labour administrations. This required all parts of the public
sector to make demonstrable contributions to government objectives
and to meet specified targets.
As far as the arts were concerned, they were expected to contribute to
a range of governmental strategies that included local economic devel-
opment, place marketing and social inclusion. In 1999, the Policy Action
Team 10 (PAT 10) report argued that participation in the arts and sport
could and should effectively contribute to neighbourhood renewal by
improving communities’ performance in the four key areas of health,
crime, employment and education (DCMS 1999). It was in this context
that there was a further proliferation of ‘impact studies’, as the publicly
funded arts sector sought to justify its ‘usefulness’ in relation to govern-
mental priorities.
Inevitably, these developments provoked a counter-reaction, in which
New Labour stood accused of neglecting the ‘intrinsic value’ of the arts
and reducing them to a mere tool for the achievement of government
8 Introduction

targets. ‘They’re a pretty philistine lot’, wrote the cultural historian,

Robert Hewison. ‘They see the arts instrumentally, as a means to help
achieve social and urban regeneration. They are only interested in the
arts in so far as they can see them achieving the New Labour vision’ (in
Kettle 2002). Acrimonious articles began to appear in the media13 and
academics started interrogating New Labour’s rhetoric around the arts
and questioning the very foundations of its cultural policy (Belfiore
2002; Selwood 2002; Mirza 2006).
Concerns over ‘instrumentaliation’ resulted in a number of cultural
commentators and arts managers calling for a ‘restoration’14 of the
so-called ‘art for art’s sake principle’ as the guiding rationale for cultural
policy. John Tusa (2002), for example, Director of London’s Barbican
Centre and a voluble critic of New Labour’s arts policies, complained
that the language of government policy towards the arts failed to recog-
nise their special nature. ‘The arts’, he wrote, ‘probably [are] instru-
ments for social improvement, agents for social change, for social
equality, or for community harmony. Yet [...] these demands [...] set a list
of challenges which are not intrinsic to the arts, are distant from their
true nature, and all of which could be antithetical to their basic func-
tions and purposes.’
Government ministers eventually found it necessary to respond to
high-profile criticisms of this kind. In 2004, the then Secretary of State
for Culture Media and Sport, Tessa Jowell, published a personal essay
entitled ‘Government and the Value of Culture’, in which she made the
following declaration:

Too often politicians have been forced to debate culture in terms

only of its instrumental benefits to other agendas – education, the
reduction of crime, improvements in wellbeing – explaining – or in
some instances almost apologising for – our investment in culture
only in terms of something else. In political and public discourse in
this country we have avoided the more difficult approach of investi-
gating, questioning and celebrating what culture actually does in
and of itself. There is another story to tell on culture and it’s up to
politicians in my position to give a lead in changing the atmosphere,
and changing the terms of debate.
(Jowell 2004, 8)

Jowell’s essay was by no means an unambiguous call for ‘art for art’s
sake’ to become the central rationale for government funding of the
arts, although it was interpreted as such in parts of the media (Edgar
 Introduction 9

2004; Fenton 2004). A number of residual instrumentalist notions still

found their way into her argument, such as the part that culture had to
play ‘in defining and preserving [...] cultural identity – of the individual,
of communities, and of the nation as a whole’ (Jowell 2004, 16–17).
Also, in order to see whether ministerial pronouncements signal a
shift in policy as well as in rhetoric, it is necessary to look at the detail
of policy implementation. In this case, the relevant public service and
funding agreements15 that were drawn up in the period following the
publication of Jowell’s essay did not show much let-up in the demand
for the arts sector to meet its instrumentalist targets.16
Nevertheless, in posing the question, ‘how, in going beyond targets,
can we best capture the value of culture?’, Jowell (2004, 18) did at least
appear to acknowledge that evidence-based policy making, at least of
the kind built upon a narrow range of easily measurable indicators, had
significant limitations in relation to the arts.17 Another government
minister, the Minister for the Arts, Estelle Morris, had confessed a year
earlier in a speech to the Cheltenham Festival of Literature, that she did
not always know how to evaluate or describe the value of the arts and
that it was necessary to find a new language (Morris 2003). This was
echoed by Jowell. ‘We lack convincing language and political argu-
ments’, she wrote, ‘for how culture lies at the heart of a healthy society’
(Jowell 2004, 8).
One organisation to take up the challenge posed by Jowell’s essay was
the think-tank Demos, which published a pamphlet by John Holden, its
Head of Culture, entitled Capturing Cultural Value: How culture has become
a tool of government policy. In this pamphlet, Holden (2004, 10–12) held
out the promise of offering ‘a new language for culture’ which would be
capable of ‘reflecting, recognising and capturing the full range of values
expressed through culture’. This new language would be expressed in
Holden’s notion of ‘Cultural Value’, a new hybrid to be constructed from
the ‘languages’ of economics, anthropology, environmentalism, intan-
gibles accounting and ‘Public Value’.18 The key virtue of this approach,
according to Holden, would be the adoption of a wider and more holistic
notion of value than that used in current methods of impact measure-
ment. ‘The recognition of Cultural Value’, Holden concluded, ‘will ena-
ble the cultural sector to achieve a working concordat between funders,
funded and the public. Each part of the settlement is given due weight
within an overarching framework that seeks to maximise public good to
promote the vitality of culture’ (Holden 2004, 60).
Leaving aside the question of whether platitudes of this kind could be
said to represent a new language, there was a deeper problem with
10 Introduction

Holden’s approach, which stemmed from its underlying assumptions.

Whilst he offered a competent enough analysis of the dilemmas faced
by those receiving government funding for the arts in Britain at the
time, his perspective was still shaped by an advocacy agenda. Thus,
although he was ostensibly searching for ‘clarity’ about the value of the
arts, his real purpose was to find convincing methods that would vali-
date public funding and promote a ‘strong culture’ (whatever that might
mean), which was ‘confident in its own worth’ (Holden 2004, 60).
It was in the context of these debates in Britain that this book was
conceived,19 although, as we have seen, the issues resonated far more
widely. We recognised, of course, that public debate about the value of
the arts in modern societies was, to a large extent, a consequence of
government funding; and that without it, the debate about value would
most likely have become a recondite affair, conducted – if at all – by
cognoscenti far away from the noisy arena of public policy. But, as we
have seen, the tendency to connect these debates to questions of fund-
ing almost always involved a slide into advocacy. Advocacy, by defini-
tion, excluded the possibility of a critical and open-ended interrogation
of what the real value or impacts of the arts might be.
If advocacy is put aside, the notion that engagement in the arts can
produce deeply transformative effects for both the individual and soci-
ety very quickly becomes a much more complex proposition. It is, for a
start, a proposition that has both an honourable and a dishonourable
intellectual history.
On the one hand, the very idea that the arts can produce changes in
the consciousness of the collective is forever bound up with the exper-
iments in social engineering pursued so relentlessly by the Nazi,
Fascist and Communist states. On the other hand, there is an enlight-
ened European tradition, stretching back through strands of
Modernism, to Matthew Arnold, English Romanticism and the Weimar
theories of culture propounded by Goethe and Schiller, that sees the
arts as the source of an ‘ethical vision’ and a repository of human val-
ues in an increasingly mechanistic world (Bennett 2001). This tradi-
tion, whose roots ultimately lie in classical thinking, is integrally
connected with the education of feelings and the development of a
particular idea of civilization. However, the values of this tradition
have also been extensively critiqued from various postmodern
perspectives as a historical relic, intimately associated with outdated
forms of Eurocentric power, privilege and patronage. In its place has
been posited a far more eclectic vision of the arts, embracing popular
culture, sub-cultures and the myriad forms of cultural diversity. This,
 Introduction 11

in turn, has been seen by some observers as indistinguishable from a

slide into an uncritical cultural relativism (Hoggart 1995; Scruton
1998).
These ideas reflect a complex intellectual history, with which it is
necessary to engage if one is to move beyond the simplifications of
advocacy and gain any real understanding of the value of the arts in
modern societies. What has been striking about public debate on the
arts, at least as it has been conducted in most of the English-speaking
countries, has been the almost complete absence of references to this
history. This is all the more surprising given that the value and func-
tion of the arts have occupied a very significant position within the
Western, and particularly European, intellectual and philosophical tra-
dition. No doubt intellectual history sits uncomfortably with evidence-
based policy making as it is customarily practised. But that does not
mean that insights from it cannot be brought to bear on the issues with
which policy has to grapple.
The aim of this book, therefore, is to inform public and political
debates about the value, function and impacts of the arts from the per-
spective of intellectual history. In particular, it explores the intellectual
origins of common assumptions about the arts, throwing light on those
twin narratives of transformation and beleaguerment, which we dis-
cussed earlier in this chapter. It also pays attention to negative valua-
tions of the arts, which have been largely suppressed in contemporary
public and political discourse. We have attempted to explore the full
range of claims made for the arts over time, with a view to producing a
taxonomy of the impacts and functions that have been articulated. As
we shall see, it is an enduring feature of the history of these claims and
counter-claims that assertions of value have always been fiercely con-
tested. From this perspective, the consensus that advocates for the arts
so earnestly seek, such as Holden’s ‘working concordat’, appears not
only unrealistic but also to miss the point.
The time-span covered by our review corresponds to the duration of
Western civilisation itself. Claims for the arts are explored through the
literary, philosophical and political literature produced within the
Western, but mainly European, intellectual field from the times of clas-
sical Greece (fifth to fourteenth-century BC) to the present day. For obvi-
ous reasons, the collection of thinkers that we have discussed is not
exhaustive, but it is intended to be representative. It ranges from major
figures such as Plato and Kant, to minor figures whose contribution
might not have been particularly original, but whose writings, by
re-working themes and ideas that had gained currency in their own
12 Introduction

times, had continued a significant intellectual tradition. What they all

mostly share, however, is a vibrant, robust and often analytically sophis-
ticated language for discussing the value of the arts. This adds weight to
our contention that is not so much a ‘new language’ that is required in
today’s policy discussions, but the reconnection with a history of ideas
that has much to teach us about current dilemmas.
1
Towards a New Approach to
Researching the Social
Impacts of the Arts

In so far as this book attempts to trace historically the evolution of

commonly held beliefs on the effects of the arts on individuals and soci-
ety, it constitutes, in the first instance, a study of ‘public intellectuals’,
and is inscribed within a research area that broadly corresponds to that
of the ‘history of ideas’, or ‘intellectual history’. According to Allan
Megill (2004, 549–50), ‘intellectual history focuses on ideas that have
some substantial degree of explicit, consciously thought-out and often
conceptually inclined development and expression, rather than on
beliefs and practices that appear as quasi-natural aspects of the “form of
life” of a particular group, or even of an individual’. The latter Megill
sees as the objects of fields of research that are distinct, if adjacent, to
intellectual history: history of mentalities, history of everyday life and
‘new’ cultural history.1 According to William J. Bouwsma (1990, 340–1),
intellectual history is best understood as an attempt to reconstruct ‘the
history of meanings’, putting forward, thus, the idea of a discipline
rooted ‘in the conception of man as an animal who must create or dis-
cern meaning in everything that he does’.
In many respects, the present work follows in the footsteps of the
analysis of the English intellectual tradition offered by Raymond
Williams in Culture and Society (1990 [1958]). Here Williams drew an
intellectual map of the development of some key concepts – industry,
democracy, class, art and culture – through their usage in the literary
works of a number of writers and thinkers (or, indeed, ‘public intellectu-
als’) in the period between the last decades of the eighteenth century
and the first half of the nineteenth century. The significance of
Williams’s historical reconstruction of the meaning of these words lies
in the importance of these concepts in ‘our modern structure of mean-
ings’ and the fact that ‘[t]he changes in their use, at this critical period,

13
14 The Social Impact of the Arts

bear witness to a general change in our characteristic ways of thinking

about our common life; about our social, political and economic insti-
tutions; about the purposes which these institutions are designed to
embody; and about the relations to these institutions and purposes of
our activities in learning, education, and the arts’ (ibid., xiii).
Although the intellectual inspiration for the present exercise derives
in large part from the influence of Raymond Williams’s legacy, there are
nonetheless a number of significant differences that distinguish the
research presented here from Williams’s Culture and Society. Firstly, there
is a profound difference in time-span and geographical focus. Whereas
Williams’s analysis concentrated itself around a clearly identified time
bracket, as was mentioned earlier, the present review spans the duration
of Western civilisation itself. The geographical scope of the survey is
also broader: where Williams focused on the English literary tradition,
the present study concerns itself (albeit, inevitably, not exhaustively)
with the investigation of ideas and writings generated within Europe,
with occasional references to other Western countries (mainly the
United States).2
The second difference is related to Williams’s attention to the work of
‘men of letters’. Williams indeed developed his notion of culture as a
distinctive way of life from within the discipline of literary criticism,
through an investigation of the desire, common among British men of
letters – from Ruskin and Arnold to Eliot and Leavis – to study and
understand works of art and literature in tight relation to the society
within which they had been produced. In fact, according to Williams
(1958; reprinted in McIllroy and Westwood, 1993, 58):

this extension of a critic’s activities in the judgements of works of art

to the study and thence the judgements of ‘a whole way of life’, has
been a marked element of the English tradition. These critics, and
others like them, have certainly always been concerned with the
arts, and beyond them with ‘the intellectual side of civilization’, but
from Ruskin’s ideas of wealth to Eliot’s ideas of class there has been
this distinctive tradition of influential social thinking by men who
took their experience of the arts as a starting point.

And this ‘distinctive English tradition’ is indeed the main object of

analysis in Culture and Society. On the one hand, the present research
too encompasses the work of authors of literary criticism, on the
grounds that this, according to Posner (2003, 223–4), ‘has long been
the medium for public-intellectual work’, so that ‘commentary on
 Researching the Social Impacts of the Arts 15

literature or on particular works of literature is one way of commenting

on political or ideological questions to a general audience’. 3 On the
other hand, however, the survey presented here also includes other
types of writings belonging to a much wider and diverse range of gen-
res, from philosophy to political economy, from psychology to cul-
tural theory. After all, an interdisciplinary approach to tracing the
history of ideas is but the reflection of the varied interests of
intellectuals themselves. Terry Eagleton (2003, 81) clearly explains
this when discussing the notion of the ‘classic intellectual’ (whom he
distinguishes from the ‘cultural theorist’, a label that has become
prevalent, in his view, since the second half of the twentieth century):
‘[i]ntellectuals were not simply narrow specialists. [...] Intellectuals
were concerned with the bearing of ideas on society and humanity as
a whole. Because they were engaged with fundamental social, political
and metaphysical questions, they had to be adept in more than one
academic arena.’4
It is indisputable, however, that this book concerns itself with the
analysis of a number of texts produced mainly within the humanities.
The emphasis on the humanistic field is also consistent with a trend –
whose origin Eagleton locates in the period beginning with the late
nineteenth century – that sees the role of the intellectual as progres-
sively being taken over by the humanities. Eagleton (2003) explains this
shift on the grounds of the marginal role that the humanistic disci-
plines were forced to in a modern world increasingly dominated by the
values of science and commerce. It was precisely this marginalised posi-
tion that afforded the humanities the necessary distance and the criti-
cal stance necessary to investigate and question the contemporary social
order: ‘[i]ronically, then, it was their growing superfluousness in a
philistine society which lent the humanities a new kind of spiritual
centrality’ (ibid., 83).
Finally – but most importantly – many developments have taken
place, at the level of cultural theory, in the almost 50 years that have
passed since the publication of Williams’s masterpiece. Postmodern
theory and its sensitivity to issues of discourse and the silencing of
minority views in the traditional understanding and reconstruction of
‘History’, as well as the criticism of the very roots of the cultural author-
ity of Western cultural institutions, have made strong inroads into the
academy, and raise a number of concerns that need to be addressed.
We therefore need to respond to potential objections that might be
moved against the present exercise (some of which are indeed linked to
the postmodern understanding of culture and history mentioned
16 The Social Impact of the Arts

above). The issues that we feel require some further explorations can be
summarised as follows:

● A problem of definitions: what are we to understand by the words ‘arts’

and ‘culture’? They are hardly crystallized and fixed concepts, but
rather, they have been constantly evolving and changing over the cen-
turies. Equally, when we talk about the distinction between various
arts forms – theatre, poetry, the novel and music – we are, in fact,
making distinctions that are the result of a process of cultural evolu-
tion and that are far from being valid for all historical times. How are
we to account for such complexity? Do we incur the risk of juxtaposing
modern concepts onto older (and possibly incompatible) world-views?
● Having discussed problems of definitions, and established that the
taxonomy of the impacts of the arts presented in the following
chapters of the book is based on a review of a European intellectual
tradition, the issue arises of how to avoid the pitfalls of a Eurocentric
perspective.
● Finally, the question arises of whether a focus on a study of intellec-
tuals does of necessity exclude popular and commercial art forms
from the present analysis. We will show therefore how the distinc-
tion between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture is, in fact, a lot more complex
than is sometimes acknowledged, and that awareness of the many
interactions between ‘learned’ and ‘popular’ culture will be an
important aspect of the present investigation.

These issues will be discussed in greater detail in the next sections of

this chapter.

Defining the terms of the debate

As already mentioned above, the present study requires a definition of

the terms under examination. In other words, what do we mean by
‘arts’ and ‘culture’? How do we construct a solid argument about the
effects of artistic artefacts of a very diverse nature by separating them
into genres (such as the novel, poetry, various musical genres) that are
historically specific? Postmodern theory has shed light on the con-
strued nature of artistic and cultural forms, especially those that the
cultural establishment ratifies as ‘art’. The efforts made within the
sphere of aesthetics to provide a valid and coherent definition of art
exemplify this very well. The question ‘what is art?’ has been puzzling
theorists since the beginnings of philosophical enquiry, and early
 Researching the Social Impacts of the Arts 17

definitions of art assumed an ‘essentialist’ view, whereby the aim was

to be able to capture, in a definition, the qualities and characteristics
that constitute art.5 This, in turn, would make it possible to distinguish
art from non-art, just by assessing whether the artefact in question
does or does not possess the ‘essential’ qualities of art. Capturing the
‘essential nature’ of art, however, has proven to be a task of great dif-
ficulty, to the point that Morris Weizt, in the mid-1950s, adapting a
concept derived from Wittgenstein’s writing, suggested that it might be
more useful to think of works of art as sharing a web of family resem-
blance, rather than a common essence that can be captured in a defini-
tion (Davies 2001, 169–71; see also Harrington 2004, 23).
Attempts to elaborate a satisfactory definition of art have coalesced,
since the 1960s, around two opposite positions within aesthetic theory:
functionalism and proceduralism, of which ‘institutional’ theories of
art are the most important example.6 It is not possible to present an
exhaustive discussion of the difference between the two views here,
and the following survey must necessarily be brief. However, it is impor-
tant to give a sense of the complexity at stake in this debate, for such a
difficulty in arriving at a convincing definition of what art is (and,
hence, what it does) obviously bears important repercussions on the
discussion that will follow. In brief, functional definitions of art are
based on the notion that art serves a purpose, so that an object is a work
of art only if it achieves the objectives and purposes of art (which can
be diverse and change over time). Functional definitions of art, then,
try to identify the functional property possessed by all works of art.
These functions might be, for example, the property of imitating nature
or expressing emotions; however we define them, though, these proper-
ties are intrinsic to the work of art.7
An important ingredient in ‘institutional’ definitions of art is the
concept of the ‘artworld’, or the ensemble of institutions (museums, art
galleries, academia, etc.) and people (art critics, art administrators,
established artists, etc.) that make up the art establishment and that
have the power to confer ‘arthood’ on an object (Danto 1964). Speaking
about visual art, Mary Anne Staniszewski has clearly shown the central-
ity of the artworld’s influence on our understanding of visual art:

Art as we know it, is a relatively recent phenomenon and is some-

thing made to be seen in galleries, preserved in museums, purchased
by collectors, and reproduced within the mass media. When an art-
ist creates a work of Art it has no intrinsic use or value; but when this
artwork circulates within the systems of Art (galleries, art histories,
18 The Social Impact of the Arts

art publications, museums and so on) it acquires a depth of meaning,

a breadth of importance, and an increase in value that is greater
proportionately than perhaps anything else in the modern world.
(1995, 28)

Staniszewski is here directing our attention to the role that official

cultural institutions have in shaping our understanding of what art and
culture are, and in determining what is ‘in’ and what is ‘out’ in the canon
of human expressions that a society accepts as valid artistic forms.
Harrington (2004, 34–5), however, contests the notion that conferral
of ‘arthood’ and hence status by an institution is, in itself, a sufficient
condition for objects to be accepted as works of art. Young (1997, 57)
similarly points out that ‘the acceptance of something as an artwork by
an artworld does not force everyone to accept the thing as a work of art.’
This questioning of the authority of artworld institutions resonates in
the argument recently put forward by John Carey (2005) in his book
What Good Are the Arts?. Here Carey argues that the faith in the artworld
is much attenuated in our present society, and this – together with the
realisation of the difficulties in penetrating other people’s emotions
and feelings – makes arguments in favour of art’s capabilities to have an
emotional impact suspect:

The question ‘Is it a work of art?’ – asked in anger or indignation or

mere puzzlement – can now receive only the answer ‘Yes, if you think
it is; no, if not’. If this seems to plunge us into the abyss of relativism,
then I can only say that the abyss of relativism is where we have
always been in reality – if it an abyss.
(2005, 30)

Another important objection to institutional theories of art, and the

notion of the artworld has been raised by Davies (2001, 174), which
flags up what he terms ‘the Artworld relativity problem’. The problem
here resides in the fact that the concept of the artworld, as expounded
by Danto and others, is founded on the presupposition of a continuous
and homogeneous tradition that finds expression in a historically and
culturally unified body of artworks, in relation to which any new
creation needs to be evaluated. However, as Davies points out, there is
more than one artworld, since all over the world a number of different
traditions of making works of art can be found. He concludes that
institutional definitions of art based on the notion of the artworld risk
being too ‘parochial’, ‘by focusing narrowly on the Western context in
 Researching the Social Impacts of the Arts 19

which “high art” is made while ignoring “low” art and non-Western
art’ (ibid.). We will come back to this problem in later sections of the
chapter. However, at this stage, it is important to underline that, not
only is our understanding of what the arts are time-specific (that is,
related to our present understanding of what the functions of art ought
to be, and to the present configuration of the artworld), but also place-
specific (the elaboration of the functions of art and culture in a society
and the nature of its artworld change from one geographical area to
another, and from one culture to another).8
The time-specificity of definitions and notions of how art and indi-
vidual art forms are to be conceived is a particularly delicate and relevant
issue for a research project that deals with such a broad time-span as the
one we have adopted in this study. For instance, in fifth century BC
Athens, the differentiation that we have discussed earlier between essen-
tialist, functionalist and institutional definitions of art would have made
little sense. At that time, the very notion of the quest for a definition of
art would have probably appeared altogether puzzling. For there is no
word, in the ancient Greek language, whose meaning corresponds to our
‘art’ or ‘arts’. The closest approximation is represented by the word techne
(and the Latin equivalent ars) which covered, however, a much broader
array of activities, ranging from poetry, painting and sculpture (that is,
our notion of ‘art’) to shipbuilding, carpentry, shoemaking and other
activities based on craftsmanship. This is because the distinction (both
linguistic and conceptual) between the ‘fine arts’ and crafts, which is at
the very basis of our modern understanding of art, simply did not exist
in antiquity (Murray 1997, 1). Consequently, our differentiations between
art forms would also have meant very little to the contemporaries of
Plato.
Nussbaum (1986, 123) makes an interesting point with regards to
the distinction we make today between fictional texts that are read for
entertainment or educational purposes and philosophical texts which
aspire to a much higher degree of rigour, when she explains that
‘before Plato’s time there was no “philosophical” and “literary”
discussion of human practical problems. The whole idea of distin-
guishing between texts that seriously pursue a search for truth and
another group of texts that exist primarily for entertainment would be
foreign to this culture.’ 9 This goes a long way in explaining why poets,
at that time, were often cited as authorities on ethical matters. Greek
poetry (in particular the Homeric poems and the tragic theatre)
enjoyed a role within the democratic government of Athens on a par
with that of the city’s laws, to the extent that passages from Homer,
20 The Social Impact of the Arts

Euripides and the other ‘classic’ authors of the Greek tradition could
be used as evidence in court cases, and they are often cited as such in
the surviving works of the great Greek orators (Dué 2003, 1).
Furthermore, Shiner (2001, 5) warns us of the ambiguities that sur-
round the notion of art in post-classical times too, and which largely
persist today. This ambiguity was borne out of the breakdown of the
concept of techne discussed above. According to Shiner, this transforma-
tion occurred in the eighteenth century, when ‘a fateful division
occurred in the traditional concept of art’:

What has been effaced in ordinary usage is not only the fracturing of
the older idea of art/craft into art versus craft, but a parallel division
that separated the artist from the craftsperson and aesthetic concerns
from utility and ordinary pleasures.
(2001, 5)

Following this split, the fine arts came to be seen as the fruit of a special
inspiration and of genius, and they became something to be enjoyed for
themselves ‘in moments of refined pleasure’, whereas crafts and popular
arts are based on mere skills and formulas to be replicated indefinitely,
and their aim is simple entertainment or the production of decorative
objects. Furthermore, Shiner (ibid.) observes, ‘this historic change of
meaning became difficult to remember after nineteenth-century usage
dropped the adjective “fine” and spoke only of art versus craft or art
versus entertainment or art versus society’, thus reinforcing the separa-
tion between the two elements of these dichotomies. By the end of the
eighteenth century, then, ‘artist’ and ‘artisan’ had become opposites.
‘Artist’ now meant the creator of works of fine art whereas ‘artisan’ or
‘craftsman’ now indicated the mere making of something useful, decora-
tive or entertaining. Before this shift, the word ‘artist’ was routinely
applied not exclusively to painters and poets, but to ‘makers’ in the
broadest meaning of the term. Around this same period – according to
Shiner – another crucial transformation took place that originated a sec-
ond ‘fateful division’. The pleasure that comes from contact with art was
now divided into two different categories: on the one hand a special,
contemplative and refined pleasure was ascribed to the fine arts; on the
other, the category of ordinary pleasures was ascribed to the sphere of
the either useful or entertaining. So, Shiner explains:

The refined or contemplative pleasures came to be called by the new

name ‘aesthetic’. The older and broader view of art as construction
 Researching the Social Impacts of the Arts 21

was compatible with enjoyment in the functional context: the new

idea of art as creation called for a contemplative attitude and a sepa-
ration from context.
(2001, 6)

The full extent of the significance of such a shift is captured by

M. H. Abrams, who refers to the range of transformations discussed
above as a ‘Copernican revolution’ in the concept of art:

In the course of a single century [...] the construction model [...] was
replaced by the contemplation model, which treated the products of
all fine arts as [...] objects of rapt attention.
(quoted in Shiner 2001, 6)

The end result of this development was the increasing centrality of the
notion of the ‘aesthetic experience’, which came to be seen as the
embodiment of a contemplative ideal whereby the full enjoyment of
the artwork required the adoption, on the observer’s part, of a special
attitude. At the heart of this attitude is the notion of ‘disinterestedness’,
which derived from the separation of artwork from context and became
central to both the experience of art and aesthetic theories. Arnold
Berleant defines this crucial concept of ‘disinterestedness’ as follows:

an attitude denoting the perception of an object for its own sake

without regard to further purposes, especially practical ones, and
requiring the separation of the object from its surroundings in order
that it may be contemplated freely and with no distracting consid-
erations. Disinterestedness began to emerge as the mark of a new and
distinctive mode of experience called ‘aesthetic’, a kind of awareness
distinct from more commonly recognized alternative modes, such as
instrumental, cognitive, moral, and religious experience.
(1991, 12)

By the early nineteenth century, through the work of the Romantics,

another important division became accepted, this time in the realm of
the functions of art, whereby the ‘fine’ arts (or, as we would say in
today’s language, the ‘high’ arts) were attributed a transcendental and
spiritual purpose as a source of a higher truth and healing for the soul:
‘Heretofore, the idea of disinterested contemplation had been applied
primarily to God; now art, for many of the cultured elite, was about to
become a new arena of spiritual investment’ (Shiner 2001, 6).
22 The Social Impact of the Arts

As this necessarily brief discussion of the changing boundaries of the

notion of ‘art’ clearly shows, the question arises of whether we can legit-
imately over-impose our modern notion of what the arts and specific
art forms are and ‘do’ when discussing older civilizations, or whether
this necessarily entails an arbitrary and dangerous anachronism. This is
indeed an issue that historians have been discussing for quite some
time, especially as a result of the so-called ‘postmodernist challenge’ to
the discipline of history and traditional historiography (Graf 2003).10
Jenkins (2004, 366), a leading exponent of a postmodern approach to
the study of history, exemplifies the ‘challenge’ as such: ‘Some histori-
ans and some theorists [...] have and still do insist on studying their
“past” for themselves and on their terms rather than on the past’s own
terms’ (emphasis in the original). This is, according to Jenkins (ibid.), a
highly dubious practice, in that it masks what is, in fact, an ideologi-
cally charged exercise: ‘For when any kind of thinking establishes itself
as the doxa, when it trips right across a social formation; when its natu-
ralness and its knowledge claims are quite literally taken for granted, are
hegemonic, then we can confidently say that we are in the presence of
an insidious political ideology’ (emphasis in the original).11
As a result of such postmodern questioning, the very possibility of
reconstructing the past with any degree of reliability and scientificity
has been doubted, to the extent that it has been suggested that history
is, in fact, just a narrative, so that it effectively cannot aspire to any
degree of truthfulness and objectivity. One of the sharpest aspects of
the postmodern charge against the historical disciplines is that – by
claiming that all historical work is, as a matter of fact, a process of
construction – its scientific and knowledge-creating claims are neces-
sarily undermined. Eric Hobsbawm has indeed expressed his fear that
the destabilising effects of postmodernism might ultimately result in a
threat to the critical role of the historian as ‘myth slayer’ (quoted in
Johnson 2001, 281).
Another (and correlated) effect of the ‘postmodern challenge’ has
been the increasing popularity of the designation of History (here with
a capital H, to indicate the practice of historians as ratified by the aca-
demic establishment) as ‘fiction’. In this view, historical narrative has
been compared to fictional narrative, and the idea has been put forward
of ‘history as literature and literature as history’ (Young 2002, 105). This
claim is based on the assertion that the reconstruction of the past, as
carried out by historians through the collection of facts and data about
the past, does not, in fact, add up to history, but rather to a kind of nar-
rative in the form of a chronicle. This logically results in the denial of
 Researching the Social Impacts of the Arts 23

any real difference between historiography and literature, that is,

between factual and fictional texts: neither can make any substantiated
claim to truth and objectivity (Graf 2003, 389–90). As Jenkins explains:

What is really excellent about historians’ historical representations is

that they always fail. There is no possibility that any historicization
of ‘the past’ can ever be literally true, objective fair, non-figural,
non-positioned and so on, all of which opens up that which has hap-
pened ‘before now’ to interminable readings and rereadings.
(2003, 376)

However, there is also a positive side to the renunciation of claims to

truth and objectivity that postmodern theory encourages. Jenkins
(2003, 376) also highlights how the fact that the historian finds himself
in the situation of dealing contemporaneously with what constitutes at
the same time ‘one past’ and ‘many histories’ (and the necessary open-
endedness of historiography that derives from this) is not just a logical
necessity, but – in fact – ‘ethically, morally and politically desirable’.
Jenkins (ibid.) argues that the impossibility, for the postmodern histo-
rian, to reach ‘interpretive closures’ is, in fact, ‘to be celebrated because
it is a positive democratic value when everybody can at least potentially
author their own lives and create their own intellectual and moral gene-
alogies, that there is no credible authoritative or authoritarian histori-
cized past that one has to defer to over one’s own personal history, or
indeed even acknowledge.’
What are the implications of these debates for the present study? To
go back to the question posed earlier, is anachronism a tangible risk
when engaging in a historical survey of ideas that covers 2500 years of
European history?
We would argue that the main contribution of postmodern critiques
of traditional historiography is to remind us of the importance of what
Paul Ricour refers to as ‘historicity’, that is, the awareness that living in
time is a fundamental characteristic of human life. For Ricour, the term
‘historicity’ signifies ‘[t]he fundamental and radical fact that we make
history, that we are immersed in history, that we are historical beings’
(in Johnson 2001, 268).
A possible solution to the ‘postmodern challenge’ to History might be
to accept the broad attitude of epistemological pluralism that it promotes,
and to follow Graf’s (2003, 395) call for a ‘plurality of descriptions’. He
accepts that postmodern theory has made it impossible to deny the fact
that many stories may be told about one set of events, and that this means
24 The Social Impact of the Arts

that there cannot be only one true story. However, he also forcefully
maintains that it does not follow from this that there can be no true
description at all, but, rather, that there can be many.12
Furthermore, it would appear that cultural history is a discipline best
placed to deal with the complexity of our contemporary understanding
of the past as made up of ‘one past’ and ‘many histories’. This is why,
according to Peter Burke:

The idea of culture implies the idea of tradition, of certain kinds of

knowledge and skills handed down from one generation to the next.
Since multiple traditions can easily coexist in the same society – lay
and clerical, male and female, that of the pen and that of the sword,
and so on – to work with the idea of tradition liberates the cultural
historians from the assumptions of the unity and homogeneity of
an ‘age’.
(2004, 25–6)

With regards to the issue of the potential anachronism that might

originate from juxtaposing modern categories and concepts with past
civilizations, it is important to bear in mind these observations by the
leading historian Perez Zagorin:

in trying to understand and analyse the beliefs and ideas of past soci-
eties and culture, historians and philosophers must not only learn to
comprehend the language and concepts by which these societies and
cultures understood themselves and reflected upon the world, but
also are often obliged to apply to them other and later concepts of
which they were ignorant or only partially and inadequately
possessed. [...] Indeed, historians of whatever field would find their
task impossible if they were barred from using concepts and terminol-
ogy unknown to those whom they study. In such cases of conceptual
translation from the present to the past, I believe that historians and
philosophers need not worry about misleading readers by anachro-
nism provided they take care to make the necessary semantic
distinctions and to remain clear about what they are doing.
(2001, 381)

This is indeed the broad line taken in the present study. This approach,
however, still leaves open the issue of how to best avoid the danger of
Eurocentrism. The question of whether our focus on the European
intellectual tradition as a means of understanding public debates around
 Researching the Social Impacts of the Arts 25

the arts and cultural policy might be susceptible to accusations of

Eurocentrism needs to be dealt with.

On the pitfalls of ‘Eurocentrism’

This is how, in an influential book by the same title, Samir Amin (1988,
vii) defined Eurocentrism:

Eurocentrism is a culturalist phenomenon in the sense that it assumes

the existence of irreducibly distinct cultural invariants that shape
the historical paths of different people. Eurocentrism is therefore
anti-universalist, since it is not interested in seeking possible general
laws of human evolution. But it does present itself as universalist, for
it claims that imitation of the Western model by all peoples is the
only solution to the challenges of our time. [...] Eurocentrism is a spe-
cifically modern phenomenon, the roots of which go back only to
the Renaissance, a phenomenon that did not flourish until the
nineteenth century. In this sense, it constitutes one dimension of the
culture and ideology of the modern capitalist world.
(1988, vii)

Amin (ibid.) also analyses Eurocentric constructions of culture, which

he sees as a set of values (which, in fact, amount, in this perspective, to a
coherent ideology) rooted in the spirit of the Renaissance and the
Enlightenment, rationalist and secular in spirit, which, albeit presented
as particularly European, also claim to be universally valid. The question-
able aspect of Eurocentrism, thus, resides in the belief that the West has
a special kind of historical advantage over other communities, or, as Blaut
(1993, 1) explains, ‘some special quality of race or culture or environment
or spirit, which gives this community a permanent superiority over all
other communities, at all times in history and down to the present’. It
was during the Enlightenment and the Napoleonic years that a combina-
tion of characteristics that were felt to be common to the whole of Europe
gradually begun to crystallise into a sense shared by European elites of
the distinctiveness of Europe and Europeans, and their superiority over
all other regions and peoples of the world. Woolf (2003, 323–4) argues
that this feeling of superiority became attached to the concept of ‘civilisa-
tion’ as it developed in that very same period. He explains that:

‘[c]ivilisation’, a noun that entered French and English usage in the

1760s, was synonymous with Europe, as was ‘progress’. The two
26 The Social Impact of the Arts

words incorporated the different facets of the idea of Europe, any of

which could be emphasised, according to place and circumstance, as
the European powers carried their mission and duty to less fortunate
parts of the world. The triad – Europe, civilisation, progress – are
commonplaces in the rhetoric of nineteenth-century imperialism.
(2003, 323–4)

Indeed, in Chapter 7, we will discuss precisely how, around this time,

the arts and culture (and their civilising powers) were appealed to in
order to help justify the colonial and imperial enterprise.
This notion of the ‘superiority of the West’ is therefore a central tenet
of a Eurocentric view and is rooted in an idealised version of ancient
Greece and its values.13 In this perspective, the achievements of demo-
cratic Athens purportedly demonstrate how Europe (here seen as an
equivalent for the West) had successfully elaborated progressive, liberal
and democratic values, as well as rational political and cultural institu-
tions from a very early stage. These achievements, in turn, made pos-
sible the birth of ‘the rational individual’, whose inexorable ascent
gave us the Renaissance and, subsequently, the Enlightenment, and
prepared the way for capitalist modernity (Hobson 2004, 7–8). This
interpretation of events also requires that the East should be declared
as clearly inferior, shrouded in the darkness of despotism and irration-
alism, as Said (1995) has shown in his influential book Orientalism:
Western Conceptions of the Orient. Again, Amin exposes this West/East
relation very clearly:

The dominant culture invented an ‘eternal West’, unique since the

moment of its origin. This arbitrary and mythic construct had as its
counterpart an equally artificial conception of the Other (the ‘Orients’
or ‘the Orient’), likewise constructed on mythic foundations. The
product of this Eurocentric vision is the well-known version of
‘Western’ history – a progression from Ancient Greece to Rome to
feudal Christian Europe to capitalist Europe – one of the most popu-
lar received ideas.
(1998, 89–90)

This idea of the ‘eternal West’ has been shown to be founded on

seriously distorted interpretations of the characteristics of ancient
Greek culture, the denial of the true extent to which it was influenced
by the Near East, and an arbitrary connection between Christianity
and this construct of Europe and of a European cultural unity
 Researching the Social Impacts of the Arts 27

(Amin 1988; Hobson 2004). Yet, the Eurocentric perspective has, this
notwithstanding, proved very resilient. The American historian Paul
Monaco, for instance, in his book Modern European Culture and
Consciousness, 1870–1970, declares:

Today, more than ever before, ideas that originated (and which con-
tinue to originate and to be elaborated) in the heartland of industri-
alized Western Europe – France, the British Isles, Germany-Austria,
and Italy – prevail everywhere in the world. All the notions that are
fundamental to contemporary life may be traced to Western European
origins. These include democratization, secularization, progress
through science and technology, the organizing of economic activ-
ity into industrial systems, inspired change through reform or revo-
lution, individual liberty, social justice, national sovereignty, national
citizenship, and human rights.
(1983, 3)

The relevance of a discussion of Eurocentrism to the present study and

to cultural policy debates is obvious. Jordan and Weedon (1995, chs 1
and 2) argue that cultural institutions and arts funding bodies in
Britain – though the same can be said of most European countries – were
originally structured (and they largely still are) according to a dominant
Liberal Humanist discourse of culture, which, in turn, they helped to repro-
duce. This Liberal Humanist notion according to which culture is associ-
ated with an ideal of perfection has been championed, in the English
cultural tradition, by Matthew Arnold. Such a concept of culture as ‘the
best that has been thought and said in the world’, has been the intellec-
tual base for the humanist tradition that has been most influential in
determining what was to be included within the boundaries of culture
and, thus, in shaping postwar cultural polices all over Europe.14
In his history of the Arts Council, Andrew Sinclair (1995, 76) openly
establishes a link between the founding of the Arts Council, and the
intention to promote artistic activities consistent with ‘Matthew
Arnold’s Aristotelian conception of culture’. Indeed, according to John
Storey (1993, 22): ‘Arnold established a cultural agenda which remained
dominant in debate from the 1860s until the 1950s.’ Liberal Humanism,
taking up some of Romanticism’s assumptions and developing Schiller’s
notion of the civilising power of art, privileges ‘The Individual’ over
social factors or social determinants. Art is thus the product of indi-
vidual talent and represents the expression of the noblest aspects of
human nature. A crucial tenet of the Liberal Humanist ideal is the belief
28 The Social Impact of the Arts

that art can speak to every human being, whatever his/her social and
educational background, if only given the chance.15
It is important to observe, however, that the notion of Liberal
Humanism is a deeply controversial one. As Tony Davies (1997, 2) points
out, a number of different and often contradictory meanings can be
attributed to the label ‘humanism’ on account of the complex and long
history of the term and the ideas that have coalesced, over time, around
it. He summarises the multifaceted nature of the concept of ‘human-
ism’ thus :

On one side, humanism is saluted as the philosophical champion of

human freedom and dignity, standing alone and often outnumbered
against the battalions of ignorance, tyranny and superstition. For
Matthew Arnold, whose work has exerted incalculable influence in
shaping educational thinking in the English-speaking world, it is
synonymous with the ‘culture’ to which we must look as the only
bulwark against the materialistic ‘anarchy’ of contemporary society.
On the other, it has been denounced as an ideological smokescreen
for the oppressive mystifications of modern society and culture, the
marginalisation and oppression of the multitudes of human beings
in whose name it pretends to speak, even, through an inexorable
‘dialectic of enlightenment’, for the nightmare of fascism and the
atrocity of total war.16
(Davies 1997, 5)

The critical account of Liberal Humanist ideals and cultural values

provided by Jordan and Weedon in their Cultural Politics (1995), which
they dissect and scrutinise from the vantage point of postmodern the-
ory, indeed confirms the highly contested nature of the tenets of the
Humanist philosophy. They argue that ‘despite the clever disguise, the
content of liberal “universals” is never universal. The “Humanity” – or,
as it has often been put, “the Man” – of which it speaks is always
historically specific, always fractured by power relations of inclusion
and exclusion based on class, gender, race, ethnicity or some other
invidious distinction’ (ibid., 33).
Nevertheless, aesthetically, twentieth-century culture has been
shaped by the hegemony of Liberal Humanist values. This view of cul-
ture, deeply reliant on hierarchical aesthetic values, allows one to dis-
tinguish clearly between what counts as art and what does not and its
effect can be seen in the constitution of cultural traditions as well as
in the practice of the arts funding bodies. In this view, Culture
 Researching the Social Impacts of the Arts 29

transmits the best ideas and values of a particular period, ideas and
values that transcend social and cultural differences. This is the rea-
son why ‘access’ has been the main focus of Liberal Humanist cultural
politics, as the experiences of British, French and generally European
cultural policies between the 1950s and 1970s prove. The Liberal
Humanist tradition views culture as ‘the works and practices of intel-
lectual and especially artistic activities’ (Williams 1976, 80), and has
therefore tended to limit ‘Culture’ (now rigorously with a capital C) to
a selective body of literary and artistic texts which are said to embody
universal truths and values, to express a fixed and recognisable ‘human
nature’ and which now constitute the kernel of the ‘great’ European
cultural tradition.
As will be discussed in greater detail, the Eurocentrism intrinsic to
this elaboration of what the boundaries of acceptable culture are has
been criticised by postmodern (particularly post-colonial) theory, thus
posing the cultural authority of traditional cultural institutions of the
West under increasing strain (Owens 1990). Austin Harrington (2004,
39–41) in his book Art and Social Theory sums up this criticism and
highlights four main problems inherent in the liberal humanist con-
ceptions of value in art. Firstly, as was noted above, humanistic scholar-
ship tends to be highly selective in its attribution of cultural and artistic
value to certain objects, and this process of value assignation is not
always a transparent one. As Harrington remarks, ‘[i]ts preferred cul-
tural objects are invariably the work of men, most often from a white
European background, and most often from the more privileged social
classes; and usually the objects are self-contained works of “fine” or
“high” art preserved in a definite material medium, rather than popular
practices or ways of life’ (ibid., 40).
Secondly, Liberal Humanism conceives the arts in terms of a highly
selective canon of works that are seen to be connected to each other by
a mechanism of stylistic descendancy. In other words, in the Liberal
Humanist view, it is possible to trace a fil rouge that connects artists to
one another across time and space. A typical example of this conception
of artistic development is represented by Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the
Artists, written in the mid-sixteenth century. The bibliographical essays
offer a discussion of the canon of Renaissance painting from its origin
in Giotto, following its development with Masaccio, and culminating
in the masters of the High Renaissance (Leonardo, Michelangelo, etc.).
A more recent example in the literary field would be F. R. Leavis’s The
Great Tradition (1948), where the development of the English-language
novel is reconstructed through a discussion of some of its canonical
30 The Social Impact of the Arts

authors: from Jane Austen to Joseph Conrad via intermediaries such as

George Eliot and Henry James.
A third limitation of the Liberal Humanist understanding of art and
culture is, for Harrington, the fact that attention is focused on the
appreciation and evaluation of the more formal aspects of the work of
art. This means that elements of the social, economic, and political con-
texts in which the work is created tend to be overlooked, as they are not
seen as the main object of aesthetic criticism. Finally, Harrington argues
that humanistic scholarship tends to assume that the meanings and
values embodied in the work of art are valid for different social groups,
thus masking the fact that the attribution of cultural value to certain
objects is in fact closely linked to conditions of power and hegemony
within society. Issues of domination and dissent, then, are equally
obfuscated:

[Humanistic scholarship] assumes value in works of art to be self

evident and everlasting, irrespective of past changes and all possible
future changes in social structure; and it focuses on cultural forms
more or less exclusively from the point of view of their existence as
self-subsistent works, not from the point of view of their consump-
tion by social audiences or from the point of view of the contribu-
tion of these audiences to the construction of their significance.
(2004, 41)

How, then, can we avoid the pitfalls of Eurocentrism and a narrow

Liberal Humanist conception of the arts and culture (or, in this case,
the ‘Arts’ and ‘Culture’)?
Wallerstein (1997, 101 ff.) has observed how the many forms and
aspects of the critique of Eurocentrism do not, in fact, amount to a
coherent picture. Some of the claims made in the name of anti-
Eurocentrism, indeed, appear not only flawed, but also rooted in the
mental prejudices and in the investigative tools devised within European
scholarship. Discussing this problem in the field of social science,
Gregor McLennan calls this ‘methodological eurocentrism’:

The question here is: is it not Eurocentric to try and pass off particu-
lar cultural and ideological preferences, even at the methodological
level, as sanctioned by the authority of history and social science
themselves? The assumption behind the question, furthermore, is
that although couched in the language of sophisticated scholarship,
modern sociological investigations remain bound to a teleological
 Researching the Social Impacts of the Arts 31

God’s eye view of the social world, one which favours Western
categories and images of effective causality.
(2000, 282)

Wallerstein (1997, 104) suggests that the best starting point in the
process of building a solid foundation for a genuinely non-Eurocentric
social science is that we have to start by questioning the assumption
that what Europe did was always and necessarily a positive achieve-
ment. This is precisely what the following review of claims made for the
impacts of the arts in society attempts to highlight. For instance, by
showing how the notion of the ‘civilising mission’ of the arts – which
has been, throughout Europe, the guiding principle in the establish-
ment of postwar cultural policies – has had disturbing applications in
Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, this book will attempt to demystify the
simplistic notions of the transformative powers of the arts which appear
so central to contemporary cultural debates and arts policies. Similarly,
by explaining how the very same belief in the civilising potential of art
was also exploited to provide a moral justification for the colonial enter-
prise in nineteenth-century England, we will bring to light the implicit
Eurocentrism that might be seen to be, in fact, still latent in much of
the present cultural policy rhetoric.
Present-day cultural policy rhetoric in Europe and much of the West is
still deeply embedded in notions of what the arts are, what effects they
have on individuals, and what their role in society is, which are an inher-
itance of a debate that has engaged European thinkers for centuries. In
other words, by reconnecting the present debate over the social impacts
of the arts to a long and complex strand of Western thought, we will be
able to demonstrate not only how the terms of the present debate consti-
tute a reductive version of a much more complex intellectual dispute over
the functions of art in society, but also the underlying, unquestioned
assumptions on which cultural policy making is based. Furthermore, we
will be able to highlight how some of these accepted notions of the
impacts of the arts on individuals and society are, in fact, based on dubi-
ous principles and beliefs, a number of which, indeed, might be termed
Eurocentric. The intellectual spirit of the present exercise, hence, reflects
that articulated by the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre:

It is one of the marks of a community of enquiry and learning that,

while it cannot but begin from the standpoint of its own cultural
and social traditions, what it is able to learn, in order to sustain itself
includes knowing how to identify its own incoherencies and errors
32 The Social Impact of the Arts

and how then to draw upon the resources of other alien and rival
traditions in order to correct these.
(in Carr 2004, 55)

On the distinction between

‘high’ and ‘low’ culture

A discussion of the distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture is

relevant to the present study of claims for the arts, because the way in
which the opposition high/low culture has been elaborated in contem-
porary cultural theory discourse has coalesced around the notion that,
whilst ‘high’ art can be expected to improve people in a number of dif-
ferent ways, ‘low’/‘popular’/‘mass’ art has the opposite effect, and is
generally charged with being ‘bad for you’.
This common view of the relationship between ‘high’ and ‘low’ cul-
ture is deftly outlined by Joli Jensen (2002, 1) in her book Is Art Good For
Us? which begins with the statement: ‘Of course the arts are good for us.
Exactly how and why they are good for us isn’t clear, but we firmly
believe that the arts are good, and that the media are bad.’ She clarifies
her statement by explaining that the ‘high’ arts are seen as a tonic,
whereas ‘popular’ arts and the media as the poison, so that ‘[t]he
presumption is that we need the good influence of the arts to offset the
bad influence of the media’. That Jensen’s diagnosis is right is confirmed
by a number of books, published mainly in the last quarter of a century,
that have tried to redress the balance, and put forward a less negative
view of popular and mass culture.17 A recent example is provided by the
aptly titled book, Everything Bad is Good For You: How popular culture is
making us smarter. In it, Steven Johnson (2005) presents a survey of the
recent developments that have been taking place in the world of com-
puter gaming, television drama and reality TV, the internet, and so on
and comes to the conclusion that:

[t]he most debased forms of mass diversion – video games and violent
television dramas and juvenile sitcoms – turn out to be nutritional
after all. For decades, we’ve worked under the assumption that mass
culture follows a steadily declining path toward lowest-common-
denominator standards, presumably because the ‘masses’ want dumb,
simple pleasures and big media companies want to give the masses
what they want. But in fact the opposite is happening: the culture is
getting more intellectually demanding, not less.
(2005, 9)
 Researching the Social Impacts of the Arts 33

In his The Intellectuals and the Masses, John Carey (1992) traces the
history of this negative view of mass art in England, and comes to the
conclusion that Modernist literature and art was, in essence, a hostile
reaction to the development of a new, larger reading public created by
the educational reforms of the late nineteenth century. According to
Carey’s argument, the ultimate purpose of Modernist writing, then,
was to exclude these newly educated readers, with a view to preserve
and reinforce the intellectual’s distinction from the ‘mass’. He further
explains that the idea of ‘mass’ is in this instance a pure fiction: ‘its
function, as a linguistic device, is to eliminate the human status of the
majority of people – or, at any rate, to deprive them of those distinctive
features that make users of the terms, in their own esteem, superior’
(preface).
Starting from the disparaging comments on the masses that can be
found in Nietzsche’s The Will to Power – whose central message is that a
‘declaration of war on the masses by higher men is needed’ – Carey
(1992., ch. 1) goes on to argue that the very popularity of Nietzschean
ideas among twentieth-century intellectuals proves the extent of the
anxiety that the rise of the masses had caused among members of the
European literary intelligentsia. So, for instance, W. B. Yeats suggested
that Nietzsche was to be read as ‘a counteractive to the spread of demo-
cratic vulgarity’ (ibid., p. 4). Carey’s extensive review of the position of
the principle personalities of the European literary intelligentsia in the
period between 1880 and 1939 demonstrates the extent to which
Nietzsche’s view of the masses was commonly shared by many of
them. Some of the illustrious names included in Carey’s survey are
Henrik Ibsen, Gustave Flaubert, Knut Hamsun, Thomas Mann, Hermann
Hesse, André Gide, Isaac Bashevis Singer, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence and
F. R. Leavis, to name but a few. The tonic/poison metaphor proposed by
Jensen is echoed in the beliefs of many members of this great pantheon
of European writers. F. R. Leavis, for example, launched a fierce attack
against the newspaper and the related poison of advertising. In an essay
co-written with Denys Thompson, Leavis (1950 [1933], 3) lamented that
the mass media arouse ‘the cheapest emotional responses’, so that ‘films,
newspapers, publicity in all forms, commercially-catered fiction – all
offer satisfaction at the lowest level’.
It is not surprising that such prejudices against popular and mass art
should be still seen at work in contemporary discourse, for – as Carey
(2005, 54) tells us, preconceptions of this kind are slow to die: ‘Taste is so
bound up with self-esteem, particularly among devotees of high art, that
a sense of superiority to those with “lower” tastes is almost impossible to
34 The Social Impact of the Arts

relinquish without risk of identity-crisis.’ It is not surprising then, that

‘low’ manifestations of culture should have waited until the second half
of the twentieth century to be deemed worthy objects of academic anal-
ysis. As Burke (2004, 17) points out, the idea of ‘popular culture’ or
Volkskultur originated in the same place and time as ‘cultural history’,
that is, in Germany in the late eighteenth century. Around this time,
middle-class intellectuals discovered and became interested in research-
ing folksongs, folktales, dances, rituals, and arts and crafts. However, the
task of writing the history of these forms of popular culture was left to
antiquarians, folklorists and anthropologists. It was only in the 1960s
that academic historians gradually became interested in the academic
study of popular culture, as demonstrated by the pioneering book by
Eric Hobsbawm, The Jazz Scene (1989), first published in 1959 under the
pseudonym Francis Newton, as a tribute to the swing trumpeter Frankie
Newton. Burke (2004, 18) ascribes this newly discovered interest in the
study of popular cultural forms and activities to the long-lasting influ-
ence of Edward Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class (1980
[1963]), which inspired a growing number of historians ‘to write history
(including cultural history) from below’.
In adopting a historical perspective of the type this book advocates,
however, the limitations of the tonic/poison metaphor become imme-
diately apparent. Firstly, a cultural history approach reveals that this
opposition is a modern phenomenon. Thus, the idea that popular cul-
ture will have negative impacts on its consumers, whilst ‘high’ culture
will lead to a path of intellectual and moral improvement, are not
related to intrinsic qualities of the cultural forms themselves, but are
rather the result of intellectual elaborations and value-judgements that
ascribe positive or negative qualities to them. So, Burke explains:

What makes exclusion problematic is the fact that people with high
status, great wealth or a substantial amount of power are not neces-
sarily different in their culture from ordinary people. [...] it may be
argued that the elites of Western Europe in early modern times were
‘bicultural’, participating in what historians call ‘popular culture’ as
well as in a learned culture from which ordinary people were excluded.
It was only after the middle of the seventeenth century that the elites
generally withdrew from participation in popular culture.
(2004, 27)

Furthermore, as will be discussed later, before the tonic/poison

opposition was developed, a number of works of art that now have pride
 Researching the Social Impacts of the Arts 35

of place in the Liberal Humanist canon of European culture, were

believed to have had the very same negative effects that are today
ascribed to mass culture. The so-called ‘Werther effect’, which will be
discussed in the next chapter, is a typical case in point.
For this reason, the survey of the claims made, over the centuries, for
what the arts ‘do’ to people, will look at claims made for both the ‘high’
and the ‘low’ arts indifferently, although the discussion will also
highlight the way in which, in modern and contemporary Europe, mat-
ters of taste and cultural habits have become a means to fashion and
shape identity, whilst also marking social and class distinctions.

Identifying categories of ‘functions’ of the arts

In order to produce a classification of the ‘impacts of the arts’, we will

explore the claims that have been made over a period of about two and
a half millennia, for what the arts ‘do’ to individuals, how they can
transform them (for the better or the worse), and the role they ought to
have in society and in relation to the state. Thus, the book will deal
with the notion of ‘impacts’ in its broadest sense, which encompasses
notions of the functions of the arts, and their effects on people.
The primary source of material for our enquiry is provided by the
writings that are usually referred to as belonging to the ‘Western intel-
lectual tradition’, that is, the diverse body of work that is now part of
the accepted curriculum for Arts, History, Philosophy and Politics
degrees in educational institutions throughout the Western world. The
label ‘Western intellectual tradition’, however, though commonly used
in academic writing, does not correspond to a fix entity. So, for instance,
Bronowski and Mazlish (1960), in a book suitably entitled The Western
Intellectual Tradition, start their history of ideas from the period of the
Renaissance, on account of the fact that the notions of the individual
and the secular state, which are central to their discussion, were first
elaborated during that time. Other scholars, however, have stressed the
pivotal role of the theoretical elaborations undertaken during Antiquity
and the Middle Ages (e.g., Haren 1992; Colish 1997).
The decision to begin our survey from the times of Classical Greece –
that is, from the times when written records of philosophical elabora-
tions in the West properly began – is rooted in the desire to offer as
complete a picture as possible of the trajectory of a few key ideas about
the arts and their effects. The reconstruction of the historical evolution
of these ideas can, in turn, help us to understand better the ways in
which these ideas have developed into commonplace beliefs in our own
36 The Social Impact of the Arts

time. As Bronowski and Mazlish compellingly put it, when commenting

on their own endeavour:

Ideas are not dead thoughts, even when they are no longer contem-
porary; for they remain steps in the evolution of contemporary ideas.
We have wanted to present the ideas of each age not as fossils but as
evolving organisms, and not as butterflies in a box but as the vital
processes of the human mind.
(1960, xii)

The main challenge posed by the broad time-span adopted in this study,
thus, lies in the difficulty of finding a framework that can allow one to
manage effectively a very large quantity of material. The elaboration of
a ‘taxonomy of claims’ seemed to provide the most effective means of
presenting and discussing the large amount of texts analysed here. The
inevitable compromise that such an undertaking requires is that strict
criteria of selection need to be applied to the large body of material that
constitutes the ‘Western intellectual tradition’. Of necessity, then, the
account that will follow cannot aspire to be exhaustive, but rather aims
to be representative of the most significant ideas to have been devel-
oped in a number of fields, from Plato to Postmodernism (and beyond),
about the functions and effects of the arts. As Bronowski and Mazlish
(1960, xiii) put it, ‘[e]very history is a map: it leaves out some features of
reality, and singles out others which are thought to display its essential
structure.’
Another important methodological problem that a survey of ideas
on this scale poses is how to interpret the material collected. As
Quentin Skinner (1969) points out, there are two main orthodox, yet
incompatible, approaches to the interpretation of texts that the cul-
tural historian can adopt. In the first approach, the texts reviewed are
considered as autonomous entities, which contain within themselves
the key to their own meaning. In the alternative approach, it is the con-
text (political, economic, religious, etc.) that contributes to conferring
meaning to the literary or philosophical text, so that a careful recon-
struction of the context is perceived as crucial to its true understanding.
As Skinner’s insightful discussion shows, both approaches contain the
seed of potential flaws. The view of the text as a self-sufficient object
of enquiry, on the one hand, entails the belief that works of philoso-
phy or literature contain grains of timeless truth, or general ideas
that are valid universally and beyond their time. This view does
 Researching the Social Impacts of the Arts 37

not take into consideration the ‘mental set’ of the researcher, who,
inevitably, will interpret texts from the past in accordance to his or
her own modern perceptions and assumptions, even when these might
not be appropriate; as Skinner (ibid., 6) puts it, ‘[w]e must classify in
order to understand, and we can only classify the unfamiliar in terms
of the familiar’. When this happens, Skinner observes, ‘[h]istory then
indeed becomes a pack of tricks we play on the dead’ (ibid., 14).
An emphasis on context as a key to unlock the real meaning of texts
produced in past centuries, on the other hand, might result in an unduly
deterministic stance, whereby ‘[t]he “context” mistakenly gets treated
as the determinant of what is said’ (Skinner 1969, 49). Skinner’s own
suggestion is that the historian of ideas should try to establish the com-
municative intentions of the texts examined and the audiences that
their authors had intended to address with their writing: ‘[t]he under-
standing of texts, I have sought to insist, presupposes the grasp both of
what they were intended to mean, and how this meaning was intended
to be taken’ (ibid., 48).
Mindful of Skinner’s criticism of the potential flaws lurking behind
either of the two most common approaches to the interpretation of
texts in cultural history, we have chosen to follow the view according to
which an intellectual history requires the consistent reference to the
historical events that took place at the time when important ideas where
first developed or later modified. We agree with Bronowski and Mazlish
that this position need not degenerate in a simplistic form of determin-
ism, for the influence is, in fact, a two-way process:

The study of ideas is an evolutionary study, and the reader should

feel behind it the context of events, the physical environment within
which ideas have evolved. He should see the influence of events on
ideas, and of ideas on events.
(1960, xi)

Within the constraints imposed by inevitable limitations of space, we

have thus, wherever possible, attempted to sketch the cultural, social
and political contexts in which the authors included in our survey
worked and wrote. As the previous discussion of the evolution of the
meaning of the concepts of ‘art’ and ‘artists’ shows, we have also tried
to bring to our study an awareness of the historically determined nature
of the language and concepts in use, and of the ways in which they
have themselves evolved and changed over time. This, we hope, should
38 The Social Impact of the Arts

help us avoid the fallacy of anachronism which, according to Pierre

Bourdieu, is inevitable when complex ideas and phenomena are treated
as ‘transhistorical essences’:

Paradoxically, historians often condemn themselves to anachronism

because of their ahistorical, or dehistoricized, usage of the concepts
they employ to think the societies of the past. They forget that these
concepts and the reality they capture are themselves the product of
historical construction: the very history to which they apply these
concepts has in fact invented, created them, oftentimes at the cost of
an immense – and largely forgotten – historical work.
(Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 94;
emphasis in the original)

As far as the identification of the ‘categories of claims’ is concerned,

the material selected for inclusion in our review18 was subjected to tex-
tual analysis, with a view to identifying recurring themes and claims
relating to the social function of the arts and the effects of the artistic
experiences on people. Those claims that seemed to recur with consist-
ent regularity were then grouped together under the appropriate ‘cate-
gory of claim’. The categories thus identified needed to be, on the one
hand, broad enough to accommodate a great deal of diversity, and the
different nuances of each author’s own articulation of the same general
claim; on the other hand, they had to display a clear individual iden-
tity that could easily distinguish each of them from all the others.
The categories in this taxonomy of impacts, then, are to be seen inde-
pendently of each other, as they bring together arguments and claims
made over a broad time-span by individual thinkers with very different
interests, cultural backgrounds and worldviews. Nevertheless, as the
next chapters will show, some of them are effectively connected and are
borne of similar views of the nature of the effects of the arts on indi-
viduals and societies. On the other hand, other categories will be in
obvious opposition to each other, in that they represent very different
and irreconcilable conceptions of the effects of the arts. Considered all
together, however, the categories here identified give a fairly compre-
hensive taxonomy of the possible impacts of the arts, and an illustrative
overview of the complexity and variety of the claims made. Finally,
since this book originated from a research project that was concerned,
in particular, with the social impacts of poetry, the novel and theatrical
performance, the examples referred to are drawn mainly (though by
no means exclusively) from these art forms.19
 Researching the Social Impacts of the Arts 39

The following chapters will present a detailed discussion of each of

the eight main categories of claims we have identified and the many
sub-categories that can be found within them:

● Corruption and distraction

● Catharsis
● Personal well-being
● Education and self-development
● Moral improvement and civilisation
● Political instrument
● Social stratification and identity construction
● Autonomy of the arts and rejection of instrumentality
2
Corruption and Distraction

The reason for starting with the negative view of the effects of the arts
on individuals and society is twofold. Firstly, the arguments that have
provided the kernel of the ‘negative point of view’ were first developed
at a very early stage in the period of time under consideration in this
book. The first systematic and coherent articulation of the tendency of
the arts (poetry and theatre in particular) to corrupt was indeed put
forward by Plato in fifth-century BC Athens. Secondly, many of the the-
ories purporting the morally uplifting powers of the arts were devel-
oped precisely to counteract the influence of Plato’s harsh indictment.
As the work of Aristotle shows, the arguments that the arts are ‘good for
you’ originally started off as a ‘counter-argument’ to Plato’s, only to
develop in a fully fledged and predominant view much later on – mainly
thanks to the intervention of a number of Renaissance theorists whose
influence ultimately would appear to have overshadowed Plato’s. The
general assumption today that ‘the arts are good for you’ seems to
confirm this.
The main themes identified and developed by Plato have generated a
rich and lively intellectual tradition and the elaboration of a range of
distinctive, yet connected arguments. Consequently, this category can
be divided into a number of sub-categories, of which we have identified
three main strands that can be summarised as follows:

● Metaphysical arguments for the negative effects of the arts

s The arts provide a flawed imitation of reality

● Epistemological arguments for the negative effects of the arts

s The arts are misleading when considered as an adequate source of

knowledge and understanding

● Psychological arguments for the negative effects of the arts

40
 Corruption and Distraction 41

● The arts corrupt by stimulating the irrational side of man

● The arts incite immoral or, more generally, dangerous behaviour;
this argument has been made especially with regards to theatre and
it is at the root of what Jonas Barish (1981) famously referred to as
the ‘antitheatrical prejudice’
● The arts distract from worthier matters
● The arts can make people unhappy

As we will attempt to show, these broad sub-categories can be seen as

a derivation of the Platonic view of the effects of the arts, which appears
to have put forward a standard ensemble of claims that have been
subsequently further elaborated by later thinkers.1 Many of the argu-
ments to be found in this category, as well as the identification of the
three sub-categories listed above, can ultimately be ascribed to the
indictment of poetry and theatre, and their ban from the ideal polity,
that Plato elaborates in book III and X of the Republic.

Metaphysical arguments

The fundamental contribution of Plato to this negative tradition, and

more generally, to Western aesthetic thinking, is his theory of art as
imitation, which is the central notion from which his other arguments
on the corrupting effects of the arts derive. Plato’s theory of imitation,
in turn, is dependent on Plato’s metaphysics, and more precisely from
his ‘theory of Forms (or Ideas)’ and the conception of a hierarchical
structure of reality that derives from it. Very briefly, the Forms are,
according to Plato, an ensemble of abstract properties or qualities, per-
fect and immutable entities that exist independently of our world and
constitute a sphere of being distinguished and separated from the
human one (Abbagnano and Fornero 1986: vol. 1, 123–4). The world we
experience in our everyday existence is nothing but a pale imitation of
the world of the Forms. As a form of imitation of the world, both poetry
and painting constitute an inexact copy of what is already an incomplete
version of the Forms. As such, artistic imitation is twice removed from
the true essence of things, and therefore intrinsically and inevitably
flawed.
This idea of the presence of something inherently false (and thus
corrupting) in artistic representation will become a recurrent theme
in the Christian suspicion of the arts, and theatre in particular, and
soon became connected to notions of idolatry. For ‘idolatry’ – as
St Cyprian of Carthage (c.200–258) clearly puts it when commenting
42 The Social Impact of the Arts

on the theatre – ‘is the mother of all public amusements’ (in Ward and
Waller 1932, 375). On similar grounds, in the early sixteenth century,
Tyndale and Coverdale, who translated the Bible into English,
proclaimed the perniciousness of poetry and popular romances on the
grounds that the truth they convey is only partial, whereas the Bible
is the one and only source of universal truths. Worse still, by gripping
their imagination, what Tyndale refers to as ‘histories and fables of
love and wantones, and of ribauderie’ have the pernicious effect of
distracting readers from the one very source of knowledge, under-
standing and ethical insight: the Bible (Fraser 1970, 3).

Epistemological arguments

The postulate of Plato’s argument on the mimetic nature of poetry is

indeed crucial: the production of images on the part of the artist does
not require any genuine knowledge of the real things being represented.
And it is precisely this argument that allows us to step into the second
sub-category we have identified, under the heading of the ‘epistemo-
logical’ arguments on the negative effects of the arts. On the grounds of
their imitative (and hence flawed) nature, in the Platonic view, it would
be mistaken to seek enlightenment or understanding through poetry.
This argument is unequivocally made in Plato’s Republic:

So shall we classify all poets, from Homer onwards, as representers of

images of goodness (and of everything else that occurs in their
poetry), and claim that they don’t have any contact with the truth?
(1993 edn, 352; 600e)

The following remarks by Socrates – the character in the Republic

functioning as Plato’s spokesperson – leave no doubt as to his position
on the topic:

An image-maker, a representer, understands only appearance, while

reality is beyond him.

Crucially, this argument is also extended to the theatre:

The same goes for tragic playwrights, then, since they’re representers:
they’re two generations away from the throne of truth, and so are all
other representers.
(Plato 1993 edn, 348; 597e)
 Corruption and Distraction 43

By redefining poetry as mere image-making, Plato declares its

consonance with the poet’s ignorance about what is real and what is
true (Janaway 2001, 6). Consequently, mimetic poetry is dangerous to
the intelligence of those of its hearers who do not have the privilege of
being aware of the illusive nature of poetry (that is, to the non-
philosophers) and who might therefore be caught up in the illusory
belief that they might acquire from it understanding and moral teach-
ings. What we see here is the very essence of the great ‘quarrel’ between
literature and philosophy that Plato introduces within Western phi-
losophy and that is fundamentally about which of the two disciplines
can rightfully claim to be a tool of moral education. Plato is making his
position on the matter very clear: neither literature nor art can teach
man anything of worth, since teaching requires the existence of some
kind of knowledge to be taught in the first place, and – as was shown
above – Plato believed that neither poets nor artists could realistically
provide that.
This epistemological understanding of the corrupting or distracting
power of the arts was later adopted by writers and thinkers who have
elaborated on the original Platonic theme and adapted it to their own
times and their own philosophical constructs. Even poets and artists
themselves occasionally subscribed to this position, as exemplified by
Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) who wrote, in his critique of Gautier,
‘[t]ruth and songs have nothing to do with one another’; this was
because ‘the artist depends on nobody but himself [...] He is his own
king, his priest and his god’ (in Passmore 1991, 106). In other words,
the artists’ works, according to Baudelaire, refer to nothing beyond
themselves, and therefore cannot guarantee access to any superior
sphere of knowledge and understanding.2
The most common result of this process of appropriation of Platonic
themes is a translation of the alleged limitation of art’s claims to truth
on the moral plane, and the consequent criticism of the negative effects
of the arts in the moral sphere. This, indeed, represents the main strand
of the ‘negative’ intellectual tradition and will be discussed in a later
section of this chapter. With regards to suspicions of the cognitive and
epistemological powers of art, Eileen John (2001, 329) has commented
that, whilst the idea that it is possible to gain knowledge from the arts
is relatively uncontroversial amongst non-philosophers, it is actually a
most controversial one within philosophy. As we will attempt to show,
the reason for such a high degree of controversy around the links
between art and knowledge depends on the difficulty of accounting for
the content and ways of knowledge-production that is assumed to
44 The Social Impact of the Arts

derive (or not) from aesthetic experiences. John (ibid.) offers a clear
articulation of the two opposite approaches that one could take when
thinking about art as a source of knowledge:

On the first, art is embraced enthusiastically but rather loosely as a

source of insight and fresh awareness. Sometimes this approach
includes the view that the special insight cannot be put into words,
but perhaps allows us to perceive the world in a new way. On the
second, opposed approach, art or experience with art is rejected as
not meeting requirements for the production of knowledge, knowl-
edge being defined along traditional lines as true, justified belief.3

The present section of this paper will focus on the latter of these two
approaches, while the former will be discussed later, in the context of
the exploration of the category of Bildung.
Lamarque and Olsen (1994, 369–70) explain that those who argue in
favour of the cognitive function of literature (though the argument
could be extended to the other arts)4 are, in fact, proposing a shift of
focus from the external and objective point of view from which gener-
alisations can be made and be expected to have universal validity, to an
internal and subjective point of view. This latter position can be referred
to as the experiential aspect (in that every person has mental experiences
that are strictly their own and have meaning just within that one per-
son’s own subjective imagination), or as the perspectival aspect (every
individual sees the world from their particular point of view, at that
particular point in time, and that particular place, and under the influ-
ence of specific and individual circumstances). In this view, which is
centred on individuals and their subjective points of view, particular
experiences and situations are seen as resulting in a special kind of
knowledge:5

One can come to share this knowledge through an act of ‘subjective

imagination’ in which one occupies in imagination the point of
view of another self. Literature, according to this theory, is particu-
larly suited to effecting this imaginative participation, by means of
which practical wisdom is increased and moral knowledge expanded.
In this view, although a literary work is held to yield the knowledge
it does because of its distinctive literary features, nevertheless genu-
ine knowledge and genuine truth are at stake and literature is seen
to keep the same company of philosophy and even the sciences.
Indeed inasmuch as one task of philosophy is to seek a better
 Corruption and Distraction 45

understanding of moral matters in its own terms, so literature, with

a similar task, becomes a companion to philosophy or even a branch
of philosophy.
(ibid., 370)

The present discussion concerns itself with the arguments put forward
against this understanding of the cognitive powers of the arts, and
therefore with the modern articulation of the Platonic position that
seeking enlightenment and access to the sphere of truth through the
arts would be a misleading exercise, and that the educational function
of the arts is but an appealing delusion. Noël Carroll (2002) has recently
reviewed in great detail the main epistemic arguments put forward in
contemporary times against the notion that the arts, and literature in
particular, can represent an instrument of education and a source of
knowledge.6 He usefully categorises such arguments in three broad
groups: the banality argument; the no-evidence argument and the no-
argument argument.7
The banality argument does not deny the possibility that art and lit-
erature may convey general, or even universal truths; however, it negates
the claim that art and literature can educate their public and thus be a
source of knowledge. The very notion of the creation of knowledge
through contact with the arts necessarily entails the idea of the acquisi-
tion of new truths and ideas that were not there before contact with the
artistic forms took place. However, the proponents of the banality argu-
ment maintain that, in reality, the truths that are commonly held to be
communicated by works of art are usually very broad in nature (as they
usually are very general truths that relate to human nature and life), to
the point of often representing little more than truisms. In other words,
in this perspective, a novel that conveys the general truth that murder
is evil can hardly be said to be teaching anything of significance; no
new knowledge is being created, rather, commonly held truths are being
reiterated. As Carroll summarises:

They [art and literature] recycle truisms that readers already know.
Consequently, since it makes little sense to claim that people learn
the truisms they already know from literature and art, there is little
point in regarding the arts as educational.
(2004, 4)

This conclusion is further reinforced by the observation that, quite

often, for the truth contained in art and literature to become explicit,
46 The Social Impact of the Arts

the readers or spectators must play an active role, by bringing to the

artwork their own set of beliefs and knowledge in order to be able to
understand the artwork and interpret it correctly.
On the one hand, then, it is beyond doubt that many statements
occurring in poetry and fiction (and in the arts in general) are true,
and it therefore follows that the arts can give us truth in this broad
sense (Hospers 1960, 37). On the other hand, however, the work of art
does little more than bringing to light and revealing ideas and truths
that were already present within the reader or spectator – though
admittedly, he or she might not be fully aware of his or her possessing
that knowledge already. Consequently, no new knowledge or real
learning is produced through the artistic experience – because one
cannot learn what one already knows (Currie 1998, 161). The func-
tion of the arts, thus, is at best to ‘activate’ already possessed knowl-
edge, rather than its creation ex novo. Writing about music and
painting in particular, Monroe C. Beardsley (1981 [1958], 379) – one
of the most prominent exponents of this position – calls this the
Revelation Theory of the cognitive status of the arts.8 He further
argues:

It is surprising, in a way, that those who write about the fine arts and
music, tend to lay so much stress upon the cognitive value of those
arts, even if [...] they are forced to contend that paintings and musical
compositions become valuable to us partly because they exemplify
for us qualities that we have already found in the world, or that we
could find if we looked far enough.
(1981 [1958], 386)

We can therefore conclude that what Carroll (2002) refers to as the

‘banality argument’ ultimately aims to invalidate the educational view
of the arts as a source of understanding and learning, since it postulates
that readers and audiences in fact already possess any truths that might
be expressed through art. A further position is represented by what
Caroll (ibid.) calls the ‘no-evidence’ argument, which moves the chal-
lenge against the cognitive and epistemological powers of the arts one
step further. At the root of the ‘no-evidence argument’ is the rejection
of the idea that the type of truth that can be found in art and literature
can be appropriately subsumed under the category of knowledge. The
rationale behind such rejection lies in the observation that, as it is com-
monly accepted within the scientific and academic worlds, knowledge
must not only be ‘true’, but also corroborated by convincing evidence.
 Corruption and Distraction 47

Most art, however, does not contain within itself any form of acceptable
evidence for the knowledge claims it makes and the hypotheses it puts
forward.
This view has been forcefully proposed in particular with regards to
the novel, where – as the argument goes – most of the statements made
by authors are not documented enough for us to be able to verify their
truth according to any reliable scientific standard. One of the main
representatives of this position is John Hospers, who, in his book
Meaning and Truth in the Arts, raises a number of concerns about the
misleading nature of attempts to seek enlightenment through poetry
and the belief in the superior wisdom of poets, which reflect quite
closely the Platonic argument discussed above:

Insofar as people have gone to literature to learn facts about the

world, and accepted literature’s statements, not on the basis of evi-
dence, but just because they were literature, they have made a seri-
ous mistake; they have accepted such statements as they would
accept a sugar-coated pill. The mere fact that some idea happens to
be written nicely does not entitle it one whit more to be considered
true, although the fact of its being nicely written might increase the
emotional urge to accept it as true; and it is just here that literary
pronouncements uttered as truth can be the most misleading, for
they can sometimes persuade us to believe what we have no grounds
for believing; and as long as what we are invited to believe is in the
realm of empirical facts and statements, we should unswervingly
believe the hard, tested fact which the scientist offers us.
(1974 [1946], 156, emphasis in the original)

It logically follows that it would be foolish to identify the value of lit-

erature with its knowledge-creating potential, and again, Hospers’s
position is unequivocal:

Certainly it must be obvious by this time that the function of litera-

ture is not to state facts, either of science or of history, or of philoso-
phy or theology or any field whatever. These truths belong to these
separate fields, and not to literature. Works of literature may inciden-
tally state truths which are enlightening in these other fields, but
only incidentally – it is not in virtue of the fact that they contribute,
for example, to sociological knowledge that they find their way into
anthologies of literature.
(1974 [1946], 157)
48 The Social Impact of the Arts

More recently, Christopher New, has dubbed the notion that works of
fiction can convey moral, political, religious or any other kind of truths,
as a ‘myth’. Here is why:

The novel may well imply that the views are true, and do so very
forcefully, but it cannot itself authenticate the views it conveys –
whether the view is a sound one depends on what the (moral and
religious) facts are, not on how the author’s fiction represents them.
This does not mean, of course, that we cannot gather truths from
fiction, only that they are not shown to be truths by virtue of being
persuasively conveyed in a novel, story, poem, film or play. In this
sense, claims that fiction has some kind of special route to moral (or
any other) truth must be rejected as fanciful.
(1999, 120–1)

Bruce Russell (2006 [2000], 390) has suggested similar arguments with
regards to film, concluding that ‘a film might remind us of the evidence
we know already, but it cannot supply the relevant evidence itself.
Imaginary situations cannot supply real data.’
On the basis of the arguments here listed in support of the ‘no-evidence’
case, should we then dismiss all art and literature as ‘non-cognitive’?
Interestingly, none other than John Hospers (1960) himself suggests oth-
erwise. Admittedly, according to the theory here discussed, art and litera-
ture cannot provide genuine knowledge, since their claims – independently
of whether they are true or not – are never adequately justified and do not
come with sufficient evidential support for generalisations to be made.9
However, what the arts can do is put forward hypotheses about the world
that is then up to the reader/spectator/audience to test and verify
appropriately:

Works of literature are able, through the delineation of character and

the setting forth of situations which are followed through in the
details of the plot, to suggest hypotheses about human behaviour,
human motivation, human actions, and sometimes about the social
structure.
(Hospers 1960, 45)

This sub-division of the ‘no-evidence’ argument, which we will call the

‘hypotheses argument’,10 has been interestingly developed by Peter
Mew (1973), with a view to contesting what he saw as the most extreme
and excessive aspects of Hospers’s ‘anti-truth theory’. Mew builds his
 Corruption and Distraction 49

argument by discussing a remark that Tolstoy makes in Anna Karenina,

where the narrator comments: ‘This playing with words, this hiding of
a secret, had a great fascination for Anna, as it has for all women’ (in Mew
1973, 330). Tolstoy’s claim offers Mew (ibid., 331) a chance to put for-
ward his main argument, namely that ‘[m]any, and probably most, of
the universal factual statements in literature are about that kind of
human behaviour [of the sort that is revealed in natural, as opposed to
engineered, situations], and there could be no such thing as the
setting-up of test situations in which to observe it’.
Mew is also careful to underline the importance of suggesting hypoth-
eses and putting forward claims for further testing and investigation;
for, how could knowledge advance (and this is true of the sciences too)
if nobody ever put forward new ideas that might not have been tested
yet, but are amenable to be verified? Furthermore, the hypotheses put
forward in literature also have the important role of stirring ideas and
opening up new possibilities of enquiry:

Both the acknowledged hypotheses of science and those universal

factual statements in literature which I think it right to take as
hypotheses have a provocative function: they stimulate others to
reconsider certain elements or parts of the world.
(Mew 1973, 333; emphasis added)

Fiction, in particular, is presented as the ideal way to express hypothe-

ses in the shape of a ‘universal factual statement which is not obviously
true, or better, which has not received maximal confirmation, and
which has thus not achieved the status of a commonly accepted truth’
(ibid.). A good example of this type of statement is represented by this
remark in Jane Austen’s Emma: ‘Human nature is so well disposed
towards those who are in interesting situations that a young person
who either marries or dies is sure of being kindly spoken of.’ As the nar-
rator remarks in Anna Karenina quoted above, Jane Austen’s statement
would be hard, if not impossible, to verify through an empirical proc-
ess.11 However, Mew observes, a good way of testing it would be for
each and every reader to compare the author’s statement to his or her
own experience, with a view of establishing whether personal experi-
ence confirms or falsifies it. Mew (ibid., 335) further argues that pre-
cisely because they rely on the reader’s personal experience for
verification, ‘the hypotheses of literature may be more informative or
revelatory than many of the factual statements made in other media’.
This is because, contrary to the kind of knowledge that is acquired
50 The Social Impact of the Arts

through studying and reading scientific material, the knowledge that is

obtained by checking literary hypotheses against our own experiences
is firsthand knowledge, and – as such – perceived as more secure and
reliable (as it does not rely on a blind faith on the accuracy and reliabil-
ity of scientists and textbooks’ authors) (ibid., 336).
Carroll, however, observes that a problematic aspect of this view is
represented by the generally ‘woefully vague’ nature of the hypotheses
suggested by arts and literature:

For if we are unable to ascertain how far the hypothesis reaches, then
talk of confirming the hypothesis seems so much arm waving.
Indeed, since extracting hypotheses from art and literature generally
involves interpretations, and interpretations themselves may often
be indeterminate and contestable, it is far from clear that the hypoth-
esis/confirmation model of artworks is very promising. For we may
rarely find ourselves with a hypothesis solid enough even to attempt
to confirm.
(2002, 5–6)

The third and final position identified by Carroll (ibid., 6) is the one that
he identifies as the ‘no-argument’ argument, which he summarises as
maintaining that ‘even if artworks contained or implied general truths,
neither the artworks themselves nor the critical discourse that surrounds
them engages in argument analysis, and debate in defense of the alleged
truths.’ As we will see, this argument is based precisely on the supposed
lack of argumentation, analysis and debate in art and literature.
The starting point for this argument resembles rather closely the ‘no-
evidence’ one, for the supporter of this view argues that whenever art-
works suggest truths (whether explicitly or by implication) they do not
accompany them with a coherent and articulated discussion that might
support them. Truths and claims are just put forward with little effort
at putting together a convincing argument in their favour. What really
characterises the ‘no-argument’ position, then, is the logical conse-
quence of this first observation: the lack of interest displayed by works
of art for the construction of a coherent argument to support the world-
view and the claims they make is reflected in the little interest displayed
by the critical discourse generated by those artworks in arguing for or
against the truths that they allegedly divulge. This argument has been
made particularly in relation to literature, where it has been observed
that establishing the correctness of truth claims made in literary works
is not a feature of the literary institutions, since both authors and critics
 Corruption and Distraction 51

alike seem generally rather uninterested in the matter. The logical

progression of the argument therefore entails that, if neither writers nor
critics are particularly concerned with the verification of the truth of
claims made in literature, then this must mean that the authentication
of truth claims is not a primary function of literature. This, in turn,
forces us to conclude that if the verification of the truthfulness of its
claims is not a significant part of what literature and literary practice
are all about, then literature must of necessity have very little to do with
the production and communication of ‘proper’ knowledge.12
The main proponents of the ‘no-argument’ position in literature are
Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen (1994, 1) who, in their book
Truth, Fiction and Literature, claim to present ‘a “no-truth” theory of lit-
erature’. They reiterate the point that one of the most striking charac-
ters of discourses of literature (both in criticism and general conversation)
is the dearth of debate over the truth-value of propositions that are
found in novels and other texts:

Though the works of critics may contain statements to the effect that
a literary work represents a certain view of life, and though it may be
intimated that this view is shared or endorsed by the critic, critical
treatments of literary works almost never present arguments in sup-
port of the view, or against the view in those cases where the critic
intimates disagreement with it. Literary criticism is not defined by a
series of speculative issues (of a psychological, sociological, philo-
sophical, or historical nature) which are debated with reference to
canonical standards of truth and correctness. Nor is there a part of
criticism which deals with the truth or falsity of works, as there are
parts which deal with, for example, narrative technique, themes and
motifs, genres, and so forth.
(1994, 332)

After a perceptive discussion, and confutation, of possible explanations

for this lack of interest in the verification of truth claims in literary
works (such as, for example, the suggestion that readers – or at least,
mature readers – might immediately recognise the truth or falsity of the
claims they encounter in literature), Lamarque and Olsen conclude:

The lack of debate in literary criticism and critical discourse in gen-

eral about the truth of such general propositions must therefore be
understood as a feature of the literary practice itself. In this respect
literary practice is quite different from, say, philosophy where
52 The Social Impact of the Arts

interpretation of the masters is subordinated to the question of where

they failed and where they succeeded in achieving real insight.
(1994, 333)

The obvious conclusion of such arguments is that it becomes impossible

to straightforwardly construe literary works as one particular type of
discourse (among others) with the primary intention of advancing
truths (ibid., 368). Consequently, the notion of the cognitive powers of
literary works is necessarily undermined.
Certain strands of postmodern cultural theory, as reflected, for
instance, in the writings of Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007), do express
similar scepticism with regards to the notion that any meaningful
knowledge or clearer understanding of the world around us can
be gained through the arts. Baudrillard’s approach to understanding
contemporary culture and society can be seen as centred around
the notion of ‘the loss of the real’. At the centre of this perspective is
the idea that, in an age dominated by TV and the other mass media,
the pervasive nature of images has resulted in the blurring of the
boundaries between representation and reality, to the extent that any
meaningful distinction between the two has become impossible (Barry
1995, 87). Whilst in the past signs referred to and where founded upon
a solid underlying reality, our present age is but a ‘simulacrum’,
Baudrillard insists, whereby ‘representation’ has been substituted by
simulation. In Baudrillard’s own words, the age of simulation is charac-
terised by the ‘liquidation of all referentials’ (Baudrillard 1988, 167). As
a result, ‘simulation threatens the difference between “true” and
“false”, between “real” and “imaginary” ’ (ibid., 168): ‘It is no longer a
question of imitation, nor of reduplication, nor even of parody. It is
rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself’
(ibid., 167). It is to this deception of simulation that Baudrillard refers
to when he speaks of the hyperreal.
Baudrillard’s writing on ‘hyperreality’ and ‘simulation’ revolves
around discussions of contemporary popular culture, the mass media
and the overflow of images and information that they cause. For
instance, Disneyland is offered as a good illustration of the predomi-
nance of simulation in the present age:

Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe

that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America
surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal
and of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation
 Corruption and Distraction 53

of reality (ideology), but of concealing the fact that the real is no

longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle.
(1998, 172)

It logically follows that if there is no reality behind the representation,

no signified behind the signifier, neither the arts nor the media can in
any way be bearers of deeper truths (for, as we have seen, the very pos-
sibility to discern true from false has collapsed), nor be a source of cog-
nitive or ethical enlightenment. As Baudrillard himself (ibid., 211)
observed, in an essay on the masses and the media, ‘the masses are also
made of this useless hyperinformation which claims to enlighten them,
when all it does is clutter up the space of the representable and annul
itself in a silent equivalence’. The consequences of Baudrillard’s theory
of hyperreality have been lucidly summarised by Zygmunt Bauman in
his Intimations of Postmodernity:

Baudrillard brooks no hope, as the all-powerful simulation destroys

all opposition to itself. Everything colludes to hide the fact that real-
ity has been banished. The brave Washington Post journalists only
added to the illusion that Watergate was a scandal, that away from
Watergate there are some binding principles and some ‘real’, solid,
reliable politics. [...] Simulation hides the fact that everything is part
of the same game; it offers the reality principle another lease of life –
this time as a zombie. One cannot step outside simulation. Whatever
one does to pierce through its veil will only thicken the camouflage.
Fighting simulation is itself a simulation.
(1992, 152–3; emphasis in the original)

Thus, in this perspective, TV and media images contribute to the simu-

lation that dominates hyperreality by representing nothing more than
themselves, yet maintaining the illusion of a reality beyond them. As
such, any educational or enlightening potential on their part is neces-
sarily denied. It is, however, in the next subsection of this chapter – on
the psychologically and morally corrupting effects of the arts – that the
view of art’s negative effects reaches its apogee, and where the tone of
the polemic intensifies.

Psychological arguments

The primary source for this group of arguments is also to be found

in Plato’s discussion of the representational arts – and poetry in
54 The Social Impact of the Arts

particular – in Books III and X of the Republic. Here Plato (1993 edn, 359;
605c) warns us that poetry ‘has a terrifying capacity for deforming even
good people. Only a very few escape.’ The target of Plato’s attack here is
ultimately the power of art and poetry to make an impression over sug-
gestible people (a category which – as we have seen – in Plato’s opinion,
included all the non-philosophers). The sinister powers that Plato
attributes to poetry and tragic theatre derive from his bipartite notion
of the soul: the rational part of the soul, and the most noble, is guided
by rational thinking and strives to achieve the overall good (politically
and in matters of personal ethics). The second, and decidedly inferior,
part of the soul is the irrational and emotional one which represents the
‘appetive’ side of human nature, on which poetry and the stage have
the stronger effect. Consequently, when we are exposed to poetry and
theatre, the rational component of the soul is overruled by the irra-
tional, and that is when the arts become a corrupting force:

And the same goes for sex, anger, and all the desires and feelings of
pleasure and distress which we’re saying accompany everything we
do: poetic representation has the same effect in all these cases too. It
irrigates and tends to these things when they should be left to wither,
and it makes them our rulers when they should be our subjects,
because otherwise we won’t live better and happier lives, but quite
the opposite.
(Plato 1993 edn, 360; 606d)

On precisely this ground, Plato declares that poetry and the stage should
be banned from the ideal city:

given its nature, we had good grounds for banishing [poetry] earlier
from our community. No rational person could have done any
different.
(1993 edn, 361; 607b).

However, what Plato envisaged was not a complete ban of poetry from
the ideally just city, for a corollary of the notion that poetry and tragic
theatre can have such a strong impact on morality and behaviour is
Plato’s belief that this transformative power – if appropriately controlled
by the Philosopher Kings that would be in charge in the ideal city – could
be harnessed for the public good. In Plato’s Republic, indeed, we find the
first coherent articulation of the principles of state censorship of the arts,
and of the use of poetry and theatre for ends of political propaganda. For
 Corruption and Distraction 55

the arts to be put to good use and their hold on man’s emotion to be
harnessed for the good of the state, however, their content must be subject
to close scrutiny by the philosophers in charge of public education, espe-
cially wherever young and impressionable audiences are concerned. The
dubious content, from a moral perspective, of much of Greek epic poetry,
thus, becomes a point of contention for Plato:

No young person is to hear stories which suggest that were he to

commit the vilest of crimes, and were he to do his utmost to punish
his father’s crimes, he wouldn’t be doing anything out of the ordi-
nary, but would simply be behaving like the first and the greatest
gods. [...] All things considered, then, that is why a very great deal of
importance should be placed upon ensuring that the first stories
they hear are best adapted for their moral improvement.
(1993 edn, 72; 378b and 73; 378e)

The impressionability of young minds has since been at the core of

many arguments in favour of censorship and the limitation of access to
cultural goods that are seen as having the potential to affect negatively
their audience. Such arguments are still relevant in the modern world.
After all, Britain had a rather strict system of theatre censorship until
1969, and concerns for the welfare of impressionable minds are still the
main rationale behind the work of bodies such as the British Board for
Film Classification, the independent regulator of the film and video
industry in the UK.13
The Platonic notion of the deep, and generally negative, emotional
impacts of the arts, and the influence that the representative arts (espe-
cially poetry and the theatre) can have on morality and behaviour initi-
ated a lively and rich intellectual tradition purporting the potential of
the arts to corrupt. In particular, an important and influential aspect of
Plato’s suspicion of poetry and theatre was his belief that the enjoyment
of those artistic forms necessarily brings with it a heightened disposi-
tion to imitate in real life the actions they depict. This belief was
embraced by Christian philosophers of various intellectual standing,
ranging from Tatian (c.150 AD), through Tertullian and St Cyprian of
Carthage (second-third century AD) to St Augustine (fourth century) – to
name but a few – and the other Middle Ages writers of Patristic philoso-
phy.14 The corrupting effect of artistic representations soon became a
central motif in the early Christian distrust of the representative arts,
and theatre in particular.15 The virulence of the Christian denunciation
of the theatre can be explained by the fact that, until the sixth century,
56 The Social Impact of the Arts

most actors were pagan, acting in equally pagan and idolatrous plays,
suffused with a profound anti-Christian spirit (Fraser 1970, 21). As
Barish (1981) has shown in his compelling book The Antitheatrical
Prejudice, the Fathers of the Church were instrumental in producing a
Christian re-elaboration of Platonic misgivings on the emotionally cor-
rupting effect of performances. The attitude of the early Church towards
theatrical performances is powerfully summarised by St Cesarius
(c.470–542), Bishop of Arles, in France, who, in one of his famous ser-
mons, declared that ‘omnia spectacula pompae diaboli sunt’: all specta-
cles are a celebration of the devil (Kohansky 1984, 23). This unequivocal
and wholesale rejection of the theatre remained an important ingredi-
ent in the attack that was waged against the stage for centuries and
culminated, in England, in the venomous writing of the Puritan anti-
theatrical pamphleteers whose work stretched from the sixteenth to the
eighteenth century.16
Despite the different levels of sophistication displayed by the various
thinkers involved in the Christian attack on the stage, the arguments
they put forward tend to be always the same, and often the influence of
Plato’s writing is explicitly acknowledged (Barish 1981 and Thompson
1966, ch. 1). Tatian (first century AD), for instance, is the author of the
earliest example of Christian antitheatrical writing, but already displays
the signature vehemence and the stock accusations of the genre. The
target of Tatian’s rage is the actor who ‘outwardly counterfeits what he
is not’, and whom he accuses of being ‘the epitome of superstition, a
vituperator of heroic deeds, and actor of murders, a chronicler of adul-
tery, a storehouse of madness’ (in Barish 1981, 44). It is, however,
Tertullian, who, in his De Spectaculis, first gives a Christian spin to many
of Plato’s arguments against the theatre, reaching a conclusion that was
to become a deep-rooted conviction throughout the Middle Ages: that
creative literature excites the emotions more than actual life, and it is
therefore extremely dangerous – to the extent that reading about or
watching a crime take place on the stage does not only become equated
with committing the crime itself, but comes to be seen as morally more
contemptible than the crime itself – on account of its potential to
corrupt, and hence harm, a large audience.
An exemplary instance of such a perplexing hierarchy of sins is
represented by Salvianus (fifth century), a disciple of St Augustine. In
his treatise entitled On the Government of God, Salvianus points out that
whilst any other sin usually entails the moral perdition of the perpetra-
tor alone, a theatrical performance has the remarkable power of cor-
rupting anybody that merely sees or hears it, not just the performers
 Corruption and Distraction 57

(Barish 1981, 80). A crucial moment in the ‘canonisation’ of the

scepticism against the theatre is represented by the stern words of
St Augustine (354–430), probably the most influential of the Fathers of
the Church. In Book III of his masterpiece, Confessions, Augustine puts
forward what would soon become central tenets of the antitheatrical
prejudice. Recalling his student days in Carthage, Augustine (1991
edn, 35) declares:

I was captivated by theatrical shows. They were full of representations

of my own miseries and fuelled my fire. Why is it that a person should
wish to experience suffering by watching grievous and tragic events
which he himself would not wish to endure? Nevertheless he wants
to suffer the pain given by being a spectator of these sufferings, and
the pain itself is a pleasure. What is this but amazing folly? For the
more anyone is moved by these scenes, the less free he is from similar
passions. Only, when he himself suffers, it is called misery; when he
feels compassion for others, it is called mercy. But what quality of
mercy is it in fictitious and theatrical inventions? A member of the
audience is not excited to offer help, but invited only to grieve. The
greater his pain, the greater the approval of the actor in these repre-
sentations. If the human calamities, whether in ancient histories or
fictitious myths, are so represented that the theatregoer is not caused
pain, he walks out of the theatre disgusted and highly critical. But if
he feels pain, he stays riveted in his seat enjoying himself.
(1991 edn, 35)

The polemical and highly aggressive tone of the more incensed

Christian writers and orators, such as Tatian and Tertullian (as opposed
to the more reflective and balanced attitude of Augustine) was adopted
by the Puritan writers in Elizabethan England, who – on the basis of
now well-worn yet still popular arguments – strived to have the stage
outlawed. Indeed, on this account, they proved more successful than
their predecessors. Thus, the proclamation of 16 May 1559 forbade the
handling of religious and political themes on the stage; the statute of
1572 imposed heavy penalties for all those actors who were not for-
mally employed by a nobleman (Ward and Waller 1932, 380). Fuelled
by the work of the Puritan pamphleteers, the antitheatrical polemic in
England progressively grew more intense, culminating with the closing
of the London theatres in 1642 (Barish 1981, 88).
The arguments put forward by the pamphleteers vary little; they all
saw the theatre as a form of direct negative influence on the spectator’s
58 The Social Impact of the Arts

behaviour, and consequently saw the stage as a corrupting force in

society. According to Bruch (2004, 13), ‘[t]o the Puritans, crimes of the
theatre included emptying the churches, perpetuating pagan custom,
distorting truth, showing forth profane, seditious and bawdy stories,
teaching knavery and lechery, causing God to visit the plague on
London, leading youth into idleness and extravagance, affording meet-
ing places for harlots and customers, aiding the Pope, and corrupting
maidens and chaste wives’. Not only were the charges against the thea-
tre remarkably broad ranging and unsubstantiated, but very often all
these accusations would be clumped together in what appears as a tactic
of piling on the charges to strengthen the impetus of the censure. This
passage from John Northbrooke’s A Treatise Against Dicing, Dancing,
Plays, and Interludes (1577) is a good example of the Puritan ‘argument’
against the theatre:

In their plays you shall learn all things that appertain to craft, mis-
chief, deceits and filthiness, etc. If you will learn how to be false and
deceive your husbands, or husbands their wives, how to play the
harlot, to obtain one’s love, how to ravish, how to beguile, how to
betray, to flatter, lie, swear, forswear, how to allure to whoredom,
how to murder, how to poison, how to disobey and rebel against
princes, to consume treasures prodigally, to move to lusts, to ran-
sack and spoil cities and towns, to be idle, to blaspheme, to sing
filthy songs of love, to speak filthily, to be proud, how to mock, scoff
and drive any nation [...] shall you not learn, then, at such interludes
how to practise them?
(in Bruch 2004, 14)

On the grounds of such premises, the conclusion can only be one, as

Northbrooke himself makes quite clear:

I am persuaded that Satan hath not a more speedie way and fitter
schoole to work and teach his desire, to bring men and women into
his snare of concupiscence and filthie lustes of wicked whoredome,
that those places and playses, and theatres are.
(in Truman 2003, 57)

Despite the attempts on the part of some of the pamphleteers – such

as Stephen Gosson in School of Abuse (1579) – to argue that the true
target of their attack was not the proper use but the abuse of theatre,
there is little doubt that the predominant feeling for the theatre
 Corruption and Distraction 59

amongst them was one of contempt and suspicion, as proven by Jeremy

Collier’s definition, in 1698, of the theatre as the ‘single source of all
filth’ (Self 2000).
The arguments of the Puritan pamphleteers that, for reasons of space,
cannot be discussed in more detail, might appear largely irrelevant and
outdated in the now prevalently secular contemporary European soci-
ety. However, as the second part of this chapter will show, many of the
Platonic ideas that had been given a Christian interpretation by the
authors we have just looked at have remained popular even as the hold
of the Christian Church on mores and beliefs progressively diminished
in the wake of secularisation.17 It is thanks to personalities such as Jean-
Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) that the persistence of the Platonic themes
developed by the Protestant pamphleteers and the Fathers of the Church
before them survived into modernity. As Barish (1981, 264) explains
Rousseau is indeed acknowledged to have ‘transpose[d] into a secular
key some of the thesis of his ecclesiastical forerunners’, in particular
with regards to the theatre.
Rousseau’s indictment of the theatre takes the form of an essay enti-
tled Lettre à M. d’Alembert sur les spectacles (1758), written in response to
an article that d’Alembert had written for Volume VIII of the Encyclopédie
in which he described the positive effects that a theatre would bring to
the inhabitants of the city of Geneva. In the course of refuting
d’Alembert’s arguments, Rousseau deals with the broader theme of the
effects of theatre on its audiences, rehearsing many of the antitheatrical
arguments we have discussed so far. In this essay, Rousseau looks at the
theatre in the broader perspective of a subject dear to his heart and cen-
tral to much of his writing: the tension between the perfect simplicity of
nature and the artifice that comes with civilisation (Costelloe 2003).
The arguments on the arts that are fully developed in the Lettre had
already been hinted at in previous publications. In the Discours sur les
sciences et les arts, published in 1750, we find Rousseau’s first indictment
of the arts, which together with sciences are identified as representative
of a civilisation that he sees as irremediably corrupt. In this essay,
Rousseau’s condemnation of the arts is predicated upon the argument
that the arts, since they originate not from genuine human needs, but
rather from pride and vanity, are in fact incapable of liberating man-
kind, and cannot have any beneficial effect. The arts, rather, are respon-
sible for the enslavement of man, for his effeminacy and his inability to
cope with military discipline. Above all, the arts and sciences have
incited man to succumb to vanity and to pursue glory and the approval
and appreciation of others (Banerjee 1977, 171).
60 The Social Impact of the Arts

Rousseau’s ideas on the arts, and his contempt for the theatre in
particular, become sharper in his Discours sur l’origine et les fondements
de l’inégalité parmi les homes, published five years later in 1755. Here
Rousseau explains that in the blessed, true state of nature vanity did not
exist. Because of the lack of vanity, no theatre, nor any form of theatri-
cality, afflicted man’s life. In Rousseau’s own words, ‘each particular
man regarded himself as the sole spectator to observe him, as the sole
being in the universe to take an interest in him’ (in Marshall 1986, 85).
As civilisation developed, and vanity and pride made an inroad in it,
however, man became preoccupied with the image and opinion others
had of him, with regrettable consequences; as Rousseau explains:

People grew accustomed to assembling in front of the huts or around

a large tree; song and dance [...] became the amusement or rather the
occupation of idle and assembled men and women. Each one began
to look at the others and to want to be looked at himself, and public
esteem had a value.
(in Marshall 1986, 85)

It is precisely in this invention of the distinction between performers

and audiences that Rousseau identifies the root cause of the inequality
that he could see dominating in contemporary society. The desire to
receive the appreciation and admiration of others also pushed men to
try and affect the qualities that could attract them, thus pushing man
to try and be (or act) differently from his true self. Thus, as Marshall
(1986, 86) explains, the theatre for Rousseau represented no less than
the fall of man form the state of nature, for it is the theatrical origin of
society that Rousseau particularly condemns: ‘[t]he rise of a theatrical
perspective turns people into actors and encourages them to make spec-
tacles of themselves; it also weakens the natural bonds between people
by turning them into spectators’.
Rousseau’s invective against the theatre reaches its apogee in 1758,
in his Lettre à M. d’Alembert,18 which presents an outright rejection of
the idea that the theatre can contribute to the cultural and moral
improvement of the populace. The essay reflects many of the argu-
ments that had already become canonical in the repertoire of the
antitheatrical polemic.19 In particular, the arguments marshalled by
Rousseau in his tirade against the theatre are moulded along the lines
of Platonic thinking on the same topic. Indeed, there is evidence that
Rousseau immersed himself in the study of Platonic thought, and
especially the Republic, during the long preparation that came before
 Corruption and Distraction 61

the writing of the Lettre: this was indeed a topic on which Rousseau
had been working on for some time, the piece by d’Alembert thus pro-
viding the required pretext for the publication of his essay (Barish
1981, 261). Barish comments that one of Rousseau’s preferred tech-
niques of adaptation was to rework citations from Plato’s writings into
epigrams. For example, adopting Plato’s theory of imitation, Rousseau
declares that ‘[i]mitation is always one degree farther from the truth
than it ought to be’ (in Barish 1981, 261). As a result of his embrace of
Plato’s mimetic view of the theatre, Rousseau also rejects the notion
that drama and the arts might have cognitive or educational value. 20
Rousseau’s Lettre, indeed, makes it plain that theatre is mere entertain-
ment, and potentially dangerous entertainment at that, since it is a
waste of man’s precious time on earth, and competes with the much
nobler commitments that work and family require – the only legiti-
mate source of pleasure and satisfaction:

theatre is a form of amusement; and if it is true that amusements

are necessary to man, you will at least admit that they are only per-
missible insofar as they are necessary, and that every useless amuse-
ment is an evil for a being whose life is so short and whose time is
so precious. The state of man has its pleasures which are derived
from his nature and are born of his labors, his relations and his
needs. [...] A father, a son, a husband, a citizen have such cherished
duties to fulfil that they are left nothing to give to boredom. [...] But
it is discontent with oneself, the burden of idleness, the neglect of
simple and natural tastes, that makes foreign amusement so neces-
sary. I do not like the need to occupy the heart constantly with the
stage as if it were ill at ease inside us.
(Rousseau 1960 edn, 16)

Rousseau further maintains that the theatre, insofar as it is amuse-

ment and thus aims to please the audience, must necessarily follow the
public’s already existing sentiment, and it is therefore incapable of
bringing about any improvement (or in fact any modification at all) in
the public’s morality and behaviour:

The stage is, in general, a painting of the human passions, the original
of which is in every heart. But if the painter neglected to flatter these
passions the spectators would soon be repelled and would not want to
see themselves in a light which made them despise themselves. So
that, if he gives an odious coloring to some passions, it is only to those
62 The Social Impact of the Arts

that are not general and are naturally hated. Hence the author, in this
respect, only follows public sentiment. [...] Let no one then attribute to
the theatre the power to change sentiments or morals [manners],
which it can only follow and embellish.
(Rousseau 1960 edn, 18–19)

This premise moves Rousseau to an outright rejection of the Aristotelian

notion of the cathartic power of theatre, whereby drama is said to
‘purge’ the audiences from excessive or negative passions:21

[T]he general effect of the theatre is to strengthen the national char-

acter, to augment the natural inclinations, and to give a new energy
to all the passions. In this sense it would seem that, its effects being
limited to intensifying and not change the established morals [man-
ners], the drama would be good for the good and bad for the vicious.
Even in the first case it would remain to be seen if the passions did
not degenerate into vices from being too much excited. I know that
the poetic theatre claims to do exactly the opposite and to purge the
passions in exciting them. But I have difficulty understanding this
rule. Is it possible that in order to become temperate and prudent we
must begin by being intemperate and mad? [...] The only instrument
which serves to purge them is reason, and I have already said that
reason has no effect in the theatre.
(Rousseau 1960 edn, 20–1)

Not only does the theatre incite passions rather than purging them,
but the identification that drama fosters between audiences and the
fictional characters in a play has a further negative moral implication.
This is because, by identifying him or herself with the characters on the
stage, their sorrows and their plight, the spectator effectively gets the
chance to escape from the moral responsibility of real life and the suffer-
ing of real people. Rousseau is anticipating a theme which, as the final
part of this chapter will show, will become central in writing around the
arts in the post-Second World War era. We refer to the notion that the
theatre – rather than having a humanising or cathartic potential – might,
in fact, simply offer audiences the opportunity to relieve themselves from
the moral burden of action in front of injustice and the suffering of oth-
ers. In this sense, then, the moral effect of theatre is a negative one:

In giving our tears to these fictions, we have satisfied all the rights of
humanity without having to give anything more of ourselves;
 Corruption and Distraction 63

whereas unfortunate people in person would require attention from

us, relief, consolation, and work, which would involve us in their
pains and would require at least the sacrifice of our indolence, from
all of which we are quite content to be exempt. It could be said that
our heart closes itself for fear of being touched at our expense.
(Rousseau 1960 edn, 25)

As Banerjee (1977, 173) explains, ‘[t]heater, according to Rousseau,

tends to destroy the moral sense of the spectators by offering a fictitious
object of sympathy with which they readily identify and by so doing
perform their moral duties on a purely imaginary plane. Not only does
this give them a false sense of satisfaction but it also makes them indif-
ferent to their real moral duties and the real sorrows of the world. The
ills of the world remain unchanged and, Rousseau seems to say, theatre
cannot and does not want to change them.’ On this basis, Rousseau
cannot but come to the stern conclusion that theatre represents noth-
ing but a cop-out for our conscience, by providing us with a form of
‘surrogate pity’ (Barish 1981, 269):

The more I think about it, the more I find that everything that is
played in the theatre is not brought nearer to us but made more
distant. [...] Thus the most advantageous impression of the best trag-
edies is to reduce all the duties of man to some passing and sterile
emotions that have no consequences, to make us applaud our cour-
age in praising that of others, our humanity in pitying the ills that
we could have cured, our charity in saying to the poor, God will
help you!
(Rousseau 1960 edn, 25–6)

What is really striking about the vehemence of Rousseau’s contempt

for the arts and theatre is that it should come from a very gifted and
successful artist, writer and playwright. Indeed, the years preceding the
publication of the Lettre saw Rousseau receiving accolades for his theat-
rical work: the comedy Narcisse (1752) and the pastoral opera Le devin du
village (1752). Furthermore, despite his rant against vanity and the pur-
suit of the admiration of others in the Lettre, his Confessions reveal that
he actually enjoyed the success and the popularity that his theatrical
works brought to him. There he revealed how, upon witnessing the
audience’s enthusiastic reaction to Le devin du village, he ‘soon aban-
doned himself fully and without distraction to the pleasure of savoring
[his] glory’ (in Costelloe 2003, 53). Costelloe further observes that there
64 The Social Impact of the Arts

is ‘something decidedly theatrical’ (ibid., 58) about the Lettre itself, and
the literary and dramatic devices that are used to make his arguments
convincing to the reader.
It is therefore unsurprising that accusations of hypocrisy should have
been made by his contemporaries against Rousseau, for indulging in
precisely those occupations he berated in his writings.22 Rousseau him-
self acknowledges this in the Preface to Narcisse, where he turns this
blatant contradiction into a paradox; by attributing his love of the arts
and theatre to the whimsical nature of man and youth, he attempts to
use the charges moved against him as a corroboration of his anti-arts
arguments:

If I have the talent, the time, the energy and the will, I shall write
books, I shall compose verse and music, I shall continue to speak
frankly of all the evil I find in letters and those who cultivate letters
and I will not think to have valued them any less for all this. It is of
course true that one day it may be said: this declared enemy of the
arts and sciences nonetheless wrote and published works for the
theater; and this declaration will, I avow, be a bitter and ironic com-
ment not on me, but on the age in which I lived.
(in Costelloe 2003, 54)

Whether or not we accept this self-justification as convincing, the fact

remains that Rousseau had a pivotal role in providing a forceful secular
reworking of the classical arguments of the antitheatrical polemic and,
more generally, the negative tradition of thinking around the effects of
the arts. It will not be surprising, then, that some of these themes should
emerge again at later points in history, as we shall see.

The arts and moral corruption

The basic idea that the arts might have harmful effects on impression-
able minds, and the notion that contact with an artistic representation
might instigate emulation is far from having disappeared altogether.
We have already seen how the concern over the potentially dangerous
and harmful effects of films is the very raison d’être of bodies such as
the British Board for Film Classification.23 The Platonic belief that fic-
tional events might well lead to emulation has indeed proved a resil-
ient one in Western civilisation and can be seen, for instance, at the
root of the so-called ‘Werther effect’ (Phillips 1985). This label derives
from the name of the main character in Goethe’s novel, published in
1774, The Sorrows of Young Werther. The novel tells the story of a doomed
 Corruption and Distraction 65

love-triangle, and concludes with the suicide of Werther over a case of

‘impossible’ love for the young Lotte, already engaged to his close
friend Albert. The novel soon became extremely popular, generating,
in fact, what has been referred to as a ‘cult following’ not dissimilar to
the one ascribed to pop stars and footballers in contemporary times,
whereby young readers of the novel were reported to dress and act like
Werther (Pirkis and Blood 2001, 155; Bokey and Walter 2002, 397). As
the story goes, the imitative frenzy did not stop at the external appear-
ance of the novel’s protagonist, and a number of young men suppos-
edly pushed their emulation of Werther to the extreme. Hence,
following an alleged spate of suicides among young readers of the book,
the novel was banned in many European countries, on account of
being a negative influence on young and impressionable minds.24
Interestingly, the idea behind the notion of the ‘Werther effect’ has
been gaining an increasing amount of attention on the part of clini-
cians and media scholars preoccupied with the ‘copy-cat effect’ that
might be engendered by depictions of suicide and violence in the popu-
lar media. Bokey and Walter (2002, 397) indeed conclude that, as a
result of research into the ‘Werther effect’ and ‘social contagion’, ‘greater
judgement and caution is now sometimes exercised by the media in the
way real or fictitious violence, especially suicide, is depicted on screen
or reported in newspapers’ (see also Bondora and Goodwin 2005).
In a most influential paper published in 1985, the sociologist David P.
Phillips, who coined the expression ‘Werther effect’ and was instru-
mental in renewing the interest of the academic community in issues of
social contagion, concluded:

[T]he evidence assembled strongly suggests that perpetrators of

violence who receive widespread exposure do indeed become role
models – and that rewarding or punishing their behaviour does
indeed encourage or discourage further violence. When murderers
are executed or sentenced to life in prison, others are deterred from
committing murders. When professional boxers are lavishly rewarded
for inflicting pain on their opponents, others are encouraged to
maim and kill. It appears, in short, that publicised violence, whether
directed against oneself or against others, can beget more violence
unless it is conspicuously punished.
(Phillips 1985, 35)25

The practical implications of these conclusions for the funders of the

arts and the regulators of the media are obvious. Understandably, then,
66 The Social Impact of the Arts

this idea of the profound impact of performances on behaviour has

been at the root of much discussion over the issue of the increasing
depiction of violence and sex on TV and in the media and its psycho-
logical effects on the viewer, a typical example being the body of litera-
ture that purports a correlation between the consumption of
pornographic material and sexually violent behaviour (see, for instance,
Adams 2000; Seto, Maire, and Barbaree 2001; Shope 2004).26
In conclusion, can the arts affect behaviour? Can they corrupt? The
questions are still open ones, as argued by James Harold (2005, 174):

Now these kind of causal claims – and pornography is the most stud-
ied example – are famously difficult to prove. The correlation, if there
is any, between viewing or reading a fiction about an evil character
and real changes in habit, attitude or behaviour on the part of the
audience is extraordinarily difficult to measure, in part because it is
so difficult to rule out other possible causes, and in part because it is
so difficult to establish the direction of causation.27
(2005, 174; emphasis in the original)

Choosing fiction as a case study, Harold (ibid.) suggests that in order to

solve this conundrum it might be useful to think in terms of ‘controlled’
and ‘automatic’ mechanisms by which narrative imagination might
affect us morally. The first perspective assumes an element of delibera-
tion in our engagement with fictions: in this view, our higher cognitive
faculties are always alert and actively engaged when we read literature. As
a result, anything that is deemed to be morally unacceptable is rejected,
and no unwanted or immoral new belief is accepted unwittingly. In the
case of ‘automatic’ mechanisms, on the other hand, we are dealing with
a number of processes that take place without our conscious control. For
the proponents of this viewpoint, fiction might influence us in ways of
which we have no awareness and over which we have no control. ‘Social
contagion’ and the ‘Werther effect’ obviously belong to this category. In
reality, as Harold (ibid., 175) argues, the most interesting aspect of the
study of ‘artistic infection’ is the interaction between these two mecha-
nisms, and a study of their combined functioning might ultimately lead
us to conclude that some fictions may indeed have mixed moral effects.
These attempts to explore scientifically the notion that works of
fiction might have a special hold on people’s passions and the power to
bypass the intellectual sphere dominated by rational thinking testify
to the persistent influence of Platonic ideas on the arts in modern
societies. Nor is this influence limited to the case of fictional stories.
 Corruption and Distraction 67

The case of jazz, indeed, is a perfect example of the ways in which the
Platonic censure on the power of the arts to excite detrimental passions
has survived, intact, into modernity.
In his Jazz and the White Americans, Neil Leonard (1962) traces the
history of the process that saw jazz being accepted as a legitimate art
form. Before that happened, jazz was surrounded by all sorts of prejudice.
Indeed, as Benny Green (1976, 16) puts it, its ‘relentless advance towards
respectability’ is one of the ‘huge jokes of jazz history’. For a long time,
middle-America was highly contemptuous of jazz, for it seemed to appeal
to and provoke man’s lower, carnal nature (what Plato referred to as the
‘appetive’ part of the soul). The preoccupations that Leonard (1962)
describes are, indeed, essentially Platonic: in the 1920s, John Philip Sousa,
a composer of military music very popular at the time, suggested that jazz
‘employs primitive rhythms which excite the basic human instincts’
(ibid, 33). In 1922, a New York physician (in what seems a paraphrase of
Plato) compared the intoxicating effects of jazz to those of alcohol:

Jazz music causes drunkennes [...] [by sending] a continuous whirl

of impressionable stimulations to the brain, producing thoughts
and imaginations which overpower the will. Reason and reflection
are lost and the actions of the persons are directed by the stronger
animal passions.
(in Leonard 1962, 33)

Unsurprisingly, the effects that the growing popularity of this musi-

cal genre was having on the minds of children was also at the centre of
the polemic, for, as we have seen, young people have been generally
perceived, from the times of Plato to the present day, as particularly
vulnerable and susceptible to undesired influences. So, in 1925, the
author of an Etude editorial poignantly entitled ‘Is Jazz the Pilot of
Disaster?’ warned that ‘[j]azz is doing a vast amount of harm to young
minds and bodies not yet developed to resist evil temptation’ (Leonard
1962 37). The early traditionalist opposition to jazz thus represents a
perfect example of what Jensen (2002) sees as the tendency to construct
popular art forms as ‘poison’; that jazz should now have become a
‘respectable’ art, is but a confirmation of the historical nature of any
notion of what is (or is not) ‘art’.
The persistence of Platonic themes in modern times has reached such
degrees of pervasiveness that traces of them can be found, perhaps sur-
prisingly, in the work of poets and artists themselves, who cherry-picked
them and incorporated them in their own thinking about art and their
68 The Social Impact of the Arts

own artistic practice, often in creative ways. For instance, the Platonic
notion that mimetic art can have such a strong hold on man’s psyche
that it might obstruct his rational faculties was originally reworked by
French poet and philosopher Paul Valéry (1871–1945) in his 1927 talk
entitled ‘Propos sur la poésie’, where it becomes a means to establish the
superiority of poetry-reading over novel-reading:

Consider the comparative attitudes of the novel reader and the reader
of poems. They may be the same man, but he is spectacularly differ-
ent as he reads one or the other work. Watch the reader of a novel
plunge into the imaginary life his book shows him. His body no
longer exists. He leans his forehead on his two hands. He exists,
moves, acts, and suffers only in the mind. He is absorbed by what he
is devouring; he cannot restrain himself, for a kind of demon drives
him on. He wants the continuation and the end; he is prey to a kind
of insanity; he takes sides, he is saddened, he is no longer himself, he
is no more than a brain separated from its outer forces, that is, given
up to its images, going through a sort of crisis of credulity. How very
different is the reader of poems. [...] In short, between the action of a
poem and that of an ordinary narrative, the difference is psychologi-
cal in nature. The poem unfolds itself in a richer sphere of our func-
tions of movement, it exacts from us a participation that is nearer to
complete action, whereas the story and the novel transform us rather
into slaves of a dream and of our faculty of being hallucinated.
(cited and translated by Dames 2004, 206–7)

The arts as a distracting agent

On a less radical note, the Platonic idea of the powerful emotional
impacts of the arts has generated another important strand of intel-
lectual enquiry exploring the power of the arts to distract from wor-
thier ethical preoccupations. This position is characterised by
significantly more balance than displayed by the proponents of the
antitheatrical polemic; it is usually accompanied by the awareness that
assuming that the arts have the power of transforming people entails
the possibility that they might corrupt as well as improve. As Ruskin
explains in his From Munera Pulveris: Six essays on the elements of political
economy:

If he [man] produce or make good and beautiful things, they will

Re-Create him; (note the solemnity and weight of the word); if bad
 Corruption and Distraction 69

and ugly things, they will ‘corrupt’ or ‘break in pieces’ – that is, in
the exact degree of their power, Kill him.
(1872, 7)

Ruskin further argues, with regards to literature:

The value of these [books] consists, First, in their power of preserving

and communicating the knowledge of facts. Secondly, in their power
of exciting vital or noble emotion and intellectual action. They have
also their corresponding negative powers of disguising and effacing
the memory of facts, and killing the noble emotions, or exciting base
ones. Under these two heads we have to consider the economical and
educational value, positive and negative, of literature; – the means
and advisability of rendering good books generally accessible, and
directing the reader’s choice to them.
(1872, 15)

A powerful articulation of the potentially distracting powers of the

aesthetic sphere, reminiscent of Platonic arguments, is to be found in
Schiller’s tenth letter in his On the Aesthetic Education of Man. Here
Schiller expresses doubts for the popular belief on the civilising powers
of art, and puts forward a much darker view of the connection between
art and the ethical quality of society:

True, we are always being told, ad nauseam, that a developed feeling

for beauty refines morals, so that this would not seem to stand in
need of any further proof. People base this assumption on everyday
experience, which almost always shows that clarity of mind, liveli-
ness of feeling, graciousness, yes even dignity, of conduct, are linked
with a cultivated taste, and their opposite for the most part with an
uncultivated one. [...]
But there are voices worthy of respect raised against the effects of
beauty, and armed against it with formidable arguments drawn from
experience. ‘It cannot be denied’, they say, ‘that the delights of the
Beautiful can, in the right hands, be made to serve laudable ends. But
it is by no means contrary to its nature for it to have, in the wrong
hands, quite the opposite effect, and to put its soul-seducing power
at the service of error and injustice.
(Schiller 1967 edn, 63 and 65)

As Schiller (ibid., 65 and 67) further explains, the ‘soul-seducing’ pow-

ers of the arts are related to their being concerned with form over
70 The Social Impact of the Arts

content, and hence, with the exterior appearance of things rather than
their true nature, with predictable negative consequences:

Just because taste is always concerned with form, and never with
content, it finally induces in the mind a dangerous tendency to
neglect reality altogether, and to sacrifice truth and morality to the
alluring dress in which they appear. All substantial difference
between things is lost, and appearance alone determines their worth.
‘How many men of talent’, they continue, ‘are not deflected by the
seductive power of beauty from serious and strenuous effort, or at
least misled into treating it lightly? How many of feeble intelligence
are not in conflict with the social order just because the fancy of
poets was pleased to present a world in which everything proceeds
quite differently, in which no conventions fetter opinion, and no
artifice suppresses nature? What dangerous dialectics have the pas-
sions not learned since, in the portrayals of the poets, they have been
made to flaunt themselves in brilliant colours and, when in conflict
with laws and duties, usually been left masters of the field? What has
society profited from letting beauty prescribe the laws of social inter-
course, which formerly were regulated by truth, or outward impres-
sion determine the respect which should attach to merit alone?
(1967 edn, 65 and 67)

Unsurprisingly after such a build-up, the conclusion Schiller comes to

in his tenth letter is decisive:

And indeed it must give pause for reflection that in almost every
historical epoch in which the arts flourish, and taste prevails, we
find humanity at a low ebb, and cannot point to a single instance of
a high degree and wide diffusion of aesthetic culture going hand in
hand with political freedom and civic culture, fine manners with
good morals, refinement of conduct with truth of conduct.
(1967 edn, 67)

Equally decisive was the conclusion reached by Søren Kierkegaard

(1813–1855), who fundamentally associated the aesthetic moment with
deception and vice. In his hierarchical view of man’s possible modes of
existence, Kierkegaard sees the aesthetic one as the first, and hence, the
least perfect. Indeed, it should ideally be but a stepping-stone towards the
ethical and finally the religious modes of existence (whereby the reli-
gious moment, and more precisely the adoption of a Christian mode of
 Corruption and Distraction 71

existence, represents the ultimate point of arrival of this journey). This is

because the aesthetic existence is dominated by sensuality, instinct, and
by a blind quest for pleasure. As Hammermeister (2002, 130) explains,
‘[w]hile for Kierkegaard most human beings exist in the aesthetic state, it
is nevertheless a mode of life characterised by despair because it is pain-
fully self-absorbed and unengaged. It should by all means be a temporary
state, akin to the childhood of man, and the inability to leave it must be
considered a form of arrested development.’ The rationale behind this
view is the observation that aesthetic existence is based on a disengage-
ment with reality, since the world becomes nothing but ‘a mere reservoir
for poetic production’ (ibid., 133). In a later work entitled The Sickness
Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening
(1849), Kierkegaard (1980 edn, 77) expresses his sceptical view of art when
he discusses the concept of the ‘poet-existence’, which is a mode of exist-
ence that encompasses both a religious dimension (in that the concept of
God is present) and an element of the despair and resignation that char-
acterises the lower modes of existence:

Christianly understood, every poet-existence (esthetics notwith-

standing) is sin, the sin of poetizing instead of being, of relating
to the good and the true through the imagination instead of being
that – that is, existentially striving to be that.
(198 edn, 77)

Kierkegaard here is expressing a concern that has proved historically

persistent, and which, as we have seen, had already been raised in the
second half of the eighteenth century by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Hanson
(1998, 204) explains this preoccupation as the assumption that ‘art is
removed, or removes us, from life, and thus from the strictures and obli-
gations that properly bind us’. Hanson further elucidates this position:

The grounds for censure seem always roughly the same: some cir-
cumstances or events require action, and art in those circumstances
or about those events not only does not count as, but in fact blocks,
appropriate action.
(1998, 205; emphasis in the original)

This conception of the distracting power of the arts resonates throughout

Tolstoy’s What is Art? (1898), where the Russian writer launches a fero-
cious attack against what he perceives as the immorality of the art of his
times, and the reductive notion that he saw as prevailing, which equated
72 The Social Impact of the Arts

art with mere amusement and entertainment for the wealthier classes. In
the book, Tolstoy makes the case for the corruption that art has under-
gone in his time. Art, he argues, has become a way for the leisured classes
to mask the emptiness of their lives. The price for such divertissement is
the exploitation and the human suffering on which the regular provision
of their favourite entertainments is based. Tolstoy argues:

To live as do the rich, idle people [...] would be impossible were it not
for what is called art – for this occupation and amusement which
hides from them the meaningless of their lives, and saves them from
the dullness that oppresses them. [...] Only occupation with what,
among them, is considered art, renders it possible for them to con-
tinue to live on, infringing all natural conditions, without perceiv-
ing the emptiness and cruelty of their lives. And this support afforded
to the false manner of life pursued by the rich is the [...] conse-
quence [...] of the perversion of art.
(1930 edn, 178)

Tolstoy is obviously and explicitly discrediting the view according to

which the arts have the power to humanise and improve their audiences.
He himself had faith in the potential of the arts to transmit the values of
Christianity and thus contribute to the establishment of a brotherhood
of men, yet, in reality, he could not but condemn the present state of
things.28 As Tallis (1995, 79) explains, ‘[t]he dissociation between the
experience of art and a propensity to good behaviour angered Tolstoy. He
would have had no difficulty in accepting that art was of little use in solv-
ing the problems of hunger and material need, but he could not accept its
uselessness in the practical world of relations between people. Art that
did not promote morality was not worthy of the name’.
More recently, the guilty separation of art and life, and the resulting
rejection of the duties and responsibilities of practical life in favour of the
mere aesthetic contemplation of society’s ills has been explored by
Arthur C. Danto (1981, 21–2). He refers to the concept of psychic distance,
first elaborated by Edward Bullough, which he explains as ‘a special insu-
lation that a transformation of attitude puts between us and the object of
our attentions, which is meant to contrast with what is designated the
practical attitude’. The contemplative detachment that can occasionally
result from the aesthetic experience is what concerns Danto:

My own view incidentally is that there would be cases in which it

would be wrong or inhuman to take an aesthetic attitude, to put at
 Corruption and Distraction 73

psychical distance certain realities – to see a riot, for instance, in

which police are clubbing demonstrators, as a kind of ballet, or to
see the bombs exploding like mystical chrysanthemums from the
plane they have been dropped from. The question instead must arise
as to what one should do. For parallel reasons, I think there are
things it would be almost immoral to represent in art, precisely
because they are then put at a distance which is exactly wrong from
a moral perspective. Tom Stoppard once said that if you see an injus-
tice taking place outside your window, the least useful thing you
can do is write a play about it. I would go further, suggesting that
there is something wrong in writing plays about that sort of injus-
tice in which we have an obligation to intervene, since it puts the
audience at just the sort of distance the concept of psychic distance
means to describe [...] .29
(1981, 22)

A similar scepticism over the civilising and humanising powers of the

arts, and a concern over the ethically dubious nature of processes of
psychic distancing have been consistently expressed, over the past three
decades, by George Steiner who – in his Language and Silence – wrote:

We do not know whether the study of the humanities, of the noblest

that has been said and thought, can do very much to humanize. We
do not know; and surely there is something rather terrible in our
doubt whether the study and delight a man takes in Shakespeare
makes him any less capable of organizing a concentration camp.
(1967, 86)

Like Danto, Steiner (1996) too has expressed his reservation for an aes-
thetic contemplation that supplants action. The most recent instance is
represented by a public lecture delivered, in 1996, at the University of
Edinburgh on the occasion of the opening of the Edinburgh Festival,
which is strongly reminiscent of Rousseau’s already mentioned argu-
ment in his Lettre à M. d’Alembert:

Personally, I cannot shake the intuition that minds and sensibilities

shaped by aesthetics, by their identification with fictions, by their
enchantment with the past (an entrenchment which defines a
humanistic pedagogy and culture), may be inhibited from any active,
concrete involvement in the anguish and demands of the present.
The cries of Lear might blot out those in the street outside your
74 The Social Impact of the Arts

window; Gieseking [sic] at Debussy may make it well-nigh impossible

to hear the terror, the thirst of the victims on the way to Dachau in
the Munich suburbs. As the millennium comes to its close, the
Periclean, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment identification of
excellence in the arts and in their reception with political-social
decency and progress looks to be dubious.
(Steiner 1996)

The moral preoccupations expressed by Danto and Steiner had also

found expression in one of the lesser known writings by Theodor
Adorno, a paper entitled ‘Commitment’ published in 1974 in the New
Left Review, that discusses the politically committed nature of the work
of Sartre and Brecht and the very possibility of a genuinely committed
form of literary writing. Here Adorno further elaborates on his famous
earlier claim that ‘[t]o write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. And this
corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write
poetry today’ Adorno (1981; first published in 1967, 34):

I have no wish to soften the saying that to write lyric poetry after
Auschwitz is barbaric; it expresses in negative form the impulse
which inspires committed literature. The question asked by a charac-
ter in Sartre’s play Morts Sans Sépulture, ‘Is there any meaning in life
when men exist who beat people until the bones break in their bod-
ies?’, is also the question whether any art now has a right to exist;
whether intellectual regression is not inherent in the concept of
committed literature because of the regression of society. But
Enzensberger’s retort also remains true, that literature must resist
this verdict, in other words, be such that its mere existence after
Auschwitz is not a surrender to cynicism. Its own situation is one of
paradox, not merely the problem of how to react to it. The abun-
dance of real suffering tolerates no forgetting; Pascal’s theological
saying, On ne doit plus dormir, must be secularized. Yet this suffering,
what Hegel called consciousness of adversity, also demands the con-
tinued existence of art while it prohibits it; it is now virtually in art
alone that suffering can still find its own voice, consolation, without
immediately being betrayed by it.
(Adorno 1974, 84–5)

Adorno goes on to discuss the inevitable aporia of committed works

such as Schoenberg’s Survivor of Warsaw, which by ‘turning suffering
into images’ (ibid., 85) seem to make sense of the morally unacceptable.
 Corruption and Distraction 75

Hence Adorno’s significant conclusion, which is worth quoting at

length:

The so-called artistic representation of the sheer physical pain of

people beaten to the ground by rifle boots contains, however
remotely, the power to elicit enjoyment out of it. The moral of this
art, not to forget for a single instant, slithers into the abyss of its
opposite. The aesthetic principle of stylisation, and even the sol-
emn prayer of the chorus, make an unthinkable fate appear to have
had some meaning; it is transfigured, something of its horror
removed. This alone does an injustice to the victims; yet no art
which tried to evade them could stand upright before justice. Even
the sound of despair pays its tribute to a hideous affirmation.
Works of less than the highest rank are even willingly absorbed, as
contribution to clearing up the past. When genocide becomes part
of the cultural heritage in the themes of committed literature, it
becomes easier to continue to play along with the culture which
gave birth to murder. There is one nearly invariable characteristic
of such literature. It is that it implies, purposely or not, that even
in the so-called extreme situations, indeed in them most of all,
humanity flourishes. Sometimes this develops into a dismal meta-
physic which does its best to work up atrocities into ‘limiting situ-
ations’ which it then accepts to the extent that they reveal
authenticity in men. In such a homely existential atmosphere the
distinction between executioners and victims becomes blurred;
both, after all, are equally suspended above the possibility of noth-
ingness, which of course is generally not quite so uncomfortable
for the executioners. 30
(1974, 85)

Karen Hanson (1998, 214) agrees that the discussion of the relation-
ship of art to life, and of the controversial (though also widely diffused)
notion of the arts’ humanising role, is made incredibly complex by ‘the
emblematic, but historically real and genuinely problematic figure of
the cultivated Nazi officer’. As Petropoulos (1996, 5) points out, the
nationalist Socialist elite ‘represented the union of barbarism and cul-
ture’, thereby questioning the conventional wisdom in favour of the
humanising powers of art.
John Carey (2005, 140 ff.) in his confutation of the argument that
contact with the arts makes people better human beings, argues that
not only was Hitler passionate about the arts, he was himself a
76 The Social Impact of the Arts

convinced proponent of their civilising mission! Frederic Spotts writes

of Hitler:

It is difficult to think of any other leader in history who attached

such importance to culture and indeed talked so much about it. Mein
Kampf, speeches at the party rallies, and on other occasions, conver-
sations with his inner circle and endless post-prandial chats were
filled with it.
(2002, 16)

Hitler, indeed, represents a good example of that particular view – which

Barzun (1975) associates with the view of art as religion – whereby ‘wor-
ship of art made human beings expendable’ (Carey 2005, 143).31 Never
did human history provide a more compelling example for the failure
of the arts to represent a civilising and humanising force in society. In
the light of his discussion of the centrality of the arts to the Nazi regime,
Geoffrey Hartman (1994, 139) concludes that ‘[t]here is no hard evi-
dence that the altruistic personality is enhanced by exposure to higher
education or “culture” ’.
Furthermore, examples of artists embracing questionable causes have
abounded throughout history; hence Richard A. Posner’s argument that:

One doesn’t have to raise the ghosts of Wagner, Céline, Pound,

Heidegger, and de Man to be sceptical about the edifying effect of
high culture in general and of literature in particular. [...] Cultured
people are not on the whole morally superior to philistines.
Immersion in literature and art can bred rancorous and destructive
feelings of personal superiority, alienation and resentment.
(1997, 4)

If cultured people have no reasonable claim to a superior sensibility,

neither can artists and writers. The impossibility of assuming that writ-
ers are necessarily fine human beings, capable of helping others to
refine their own humanity is proven, according to Posner (ibid.), by the
often dubious moral content of their books:

The classics are full of moral atrocities – as they appear to us today,

and sometimes as they appeared to the more enlightened members
of the author’s own society – that the author apparently approved of.
Rape, pillage, murder, human and animal sacrifice, concubinage,
and slavery in the Iliad; misogyny in the Oresteia and countless other
 Corruption and Distraction 77

works; blood-curdling vengeance; anti-Semitism in more works of

literature than one can count, including works by Shakespeare and
Dickens; racism and sexism likewise; homophobia (think only of
Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida and Mann’s ‘Death in Venice’);
monarchism, aristocracy, caste systems and other illegitimate (as
they seem to us) forms of hierarchy; colonialism, imperialism, reli-
gious obscurantism, militarism, gratuitous violence, torture (as of
Iago in Othello), and criminality; alcoholism and drug addiction;
relentless stereotyping; sadism; pornography; machismo; cruelty to
animals (bullfighting, for example); snobbism; praise for fascism and
communism, and for idleness; contempt for the poor, the frail, the
elderly, the deformed, and the unsophisticated, for people who work
for a living, for the law-abiding, and for democratic processes. The
world of literature is a moral anarchy.32

If we move from the societal to the individual level, we must also

register the work done in the psychology field by the area of research
referred to as ‘happiness studies’. For instance, Layard (2005, 88–90)
argues that watching TV can make us less happy by fostering unfavour-
able comparisons between our lives and the exciting and luxurious life-
style of wealthy celebrities. Furthermore, a recent paper co-authored by
the renowned scholar of creativity Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2003) –
the creator of the ‘theory of flow’ – reported the findings of a vast
empirical research that showed, amongst other things, that young peo-
ple who loved reading for pleasure and systematically spent a signifi-
cant part of their leisure time reading, displayed fewer social skills and
lower indicators of happiness than their peers who devoted their free
time to playground games. Whilst it would be foolish to suggest, for
example, that literature should not be taught in schools on the basis of
this evidence (and, indeed, in no way does this book suggests anything
of the sort), a serious approach to understanding the social impact of
the arts ought at least to acknowledge the possibility that the arts might
have negative impacts.

* * *

In conclusion, this chapter has presented a necessarily brief review of a

distinctive ‘negative’ strand in the Western tradition of philosophical
investigations around the powers of the arts to transform people. This
strand of writing purports that the arts have potentially damaging
effects on both individuals and society as a whole. According to the
78 The Social Impact of the Arts

thinkers considered here, the ways in which the arts can exert such
negative impacts can be very diverse, though they cluster around two
main allegations. On a cognitive level, the concern of the writers dis-
cussed here focuses on the misleading nature of the common belief that
we can acquire knowledge and insight into human nature from poetry
and art. On the ethical level, the charges are that the arts may affect
ethical beliefs and behaviour for the worse, or distract from worthier
preoccupations or the need to take action when the circumstances
require it.
3
Catharsis

The concept of catharsis as the end result of tragic theatrical

performance finds its first elaboration in the Poetics, a later work by
the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384/3–322/1 BC), a pupil of Plato.
Commentators widely agree that, whilst an original work, the Poetics
was meant to be a response to Plato’s attack on poetry in Book X of the
Republic, and an attempt to put forward a more positive view of the
arts, their emotional impacts and cognitive value (Dorsch 1965, 17;
Cooper 1972, 9).1 As we will see, Aristotle’s concept of catharsis, has
proven extremely influential, inspiring, above all, the theories of the
Italian Renaissance literary critics of the generation flourishing around
the mid-sixteenth century, and extending its effects to the most dispa-
rate disciplines, including literary criticism, classical studies, philoso-
phy, psychology and psychoanalysis (Hathaway 1962, 205–300). 2
Aristotle’s discussion of catharsis is, as a matter of fact, very limited
in the Poetics, and, indeed, the term occurs only once in the entire
work. Unsurprisingly, then, a number of different interpretations
have been put forward over the centuries that attempt to reconstruct
Aristotle’s thinking on the basis of his arguments and references to
similar concepts in the rest of the Poetics (which, however, has come
to us possibly incomplete) and other earlier writings by Aristotle,
namely the Rhetorics, the Politics and the Nicomachean Ethics. Indeed,
Hathaway (1962, 206) has suggested that the vagueness and hence
mysteriousness of Aristotle’s concept of catharsis (which is never
actually defined univocally) might have been one of the reasons for
its immense popularity, especially with the literary critics of the
Italian Renaissance, who were on the lookout for intellectual ammu-
nition to combat the influence of the Platonic suspicion of poetry
that was discussed earlier.

79
80 The Social Impact of the Arts

The importance of the claim for a cathartic function of theatre in

particular, and the arts in general, lies in the fact that the idea of a per-
sonal growth and of a moral self-perfecting process, which are subsumed
within it, have been historically very important rationales for the state
promotion of the arts and the encouragement of public participation in
cultural activities. In some ways, Aristotle can be seen to offer one of the
first ‘instrumental’ interpretations of the value of tragic performance.
This point was first made, in the 1960s, by Baxter Hathaway (1962, 205)
with reference to the influence of catharsis on theorists of the sixteenth
century. Yet, as this section of the chapter will show, the argument
could, in fact, be extended to modern criticism too:

For over four hundred years now, Aristotle’s idea that the function
of tragedy can be likened to a purgation has been a dynamic
principle in literary criticism, for better or for worse. It has been a
constant invitation to philosophers to apply standards to poetry
that do not pertain to poetry as poetry and that make it function as
instrumental assistant to some job or other of social or psychological
welfare.

Today, the question is still far from being settled and the most popular
interpretations of the notion of catharsis are still fighting for popularity
and for the role of ‘best’ interpretation of the perplexing yet tantalising
Aristotelian passage on catharsis. The passage in question is represented
by the opening paragraph of Chapter 6 of the Poetics, where Aristotle
proffers his own definition of tragedy. As Aristotle himself explains in
the introduction of the essay, the Poetics is a work that concerns itself
with the defining characteristics of the various kinds of poetry, that is,
epic poetry, dramatic poetry and lyrical poetry. Mention of the process
of catharsis appears at the beginning of Chapter 6, which deals with
dramatic poetry of the tragic kind.3 The crux of the problem is how to
translate the term ka 9 uarsin, which closes Aristotle’s definition of trag-
edy, for the choice of one alternative over another implies the subscrip-
tion to one of the many interpretations of tragic catharsis elaborated in
the last 2000 years.
For example, in his influential translation, Butcher rendered the final
part of the definition of tragedy so:

Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete in

itself, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each
kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in several
 Catharsis 81

parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity
and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.
(1951, 23; emphasis added)

This is, indeed, one of the most commonly accepted translations,4 based
on the fact that the verb kathairo means, in ancient Greek, ‘to cleanse’
or ‘remove impurities’ (Lucas 1968, 276). Other commentators, how-
ever, have suggested very different alternatives for the crucial last part
of Aristotle’s definition of tragedy. So, for instance, Margoliouth (1911,
154) proposes: ‘indirectly through pity and terror righting mental disor-
ders of this type’ (emphasis added). W. Hamilton Fyfe (1932, 23) suggests
that tragedy, through pity and fear, ‘effects relief to these and similar
emotions’ (emphasis added). Others5 still, have chosen, rather, to play it
safe, by using the word ‘catharsis’ in their translation; if, on the one
hand, this choice might avoid the risk of putting words in Aristotle’s
mouth that he did not intend to utter, on the other, it leaves the inter-
pretative problem open, without even suggesting a possible solution.
Whilst the philological debates that are behind these competing
alternative translations are beyond the scope and the concerns of this
book, the different interpretations of the process of ‘catharsis’ as envis-
aged by Aristotle to result from tragedies are of great relevance to the
present study. For the different understandings of catharsis have proven
very influential over the centuries, so that each of them has represented
the seedbed for subsequent theories of the educational, purifying and
emotional impacts of the arts. It is indeed the legacy of Aristotle’s
catharsis that will be at the centre of this discussion. The following
analysis relies on Halliwell’s (1986, 350–6) classification of the main
interpretations of the concept of catharsis. Every single one of these has
proved popular and influential over time, giving rise to entirely distinct
and complex theories of the cathartic powers of the arts. The following
discussion will therefore be necessarily terse and succinct and focus
principally on the ramifications of Aristotle’s thinking that are most
relevant to our discussion.
Halliwell (1986) identifies six main interpretation of ‘catharsis’.

Moralistic/didactic catharsis

The first interpretation, which prevailed in the period of neo-classicism,

is the moralistic or didactic view of catharsis, which posits that tragedy
(and the argument was eventually extended to theatre in general) has
primarily a function of moral education. Through example and
82 The Social Impact of the Arts

counter-example, theatrical performances teach the audience to restrain

their own emotions, thus avoiding the consequences that would befall
them if those feelings and passions had free rein on them. As Halliwell
(1986, 351) explains, ‘we learn through katharsis to avoid those passions
which can lead to suffering and tragedy’. As mentioned above, this
interpretation was the favoured one in the mid sixteenth century, and
was particularly promoted in the writings of the Italian humanists,
especially by Francesco Robortelli, and Vincenzo Maggi (Kostic9 1960
and Hathaway 1962).6
Francesco Robortelli (1516–1567), in the introduction to his commen-
taries on the Poetics, published in 1548, observes:

If the imitation and performance on the stage is of horrible things and

perils, the temerity and the insane audacity of men is diminished; but
if things worthy of pity should be represented, the minds of the audi-
tors are bent towards gentleness and pity. What more need I say? Every
imitation and every poetic performance accompanied by action pulls,
softens, drives, incites, touches, inflames the souls of men.
(in Hathaway 1962, 219–20)

Robortelli’s views were echoed in the commentaries published just two

years later by Vincenzo Maggi (1498–1564), who argued that tragedy
works its magic on the audience by freeing ‘the mind of perturbations
like pity and terror. Passions of the mind of this kind are precisely the
concupiscible and irascible passions’ (ibid., 222). What these passages rep-
resent is the crystallisation of one of the most common interpretations of
catharsis as ‘purgation’ of excessive or undesirable emotions through the
theatrical experience. Hathaway (ibid.) and Halliwell (1986) argue that it
is precisely this view which, first popularised by the Renaissance writers,7
and through later developments in Corneille, Rapin and Dacier in France,
and Dryden and Johnson in England, established itself as one of the
orthodox interpretations of the cathartic process as ‘purgation’. One of
the clearest expositions of the moralistic/didactic view, is offered by
Isaiah Smithson (1983), who argues that, in tragedy, pity and fear are
ultimately ‘self-directed emotions’ in that the audience can fear for, and
sympathise with, the heroes on stage purely because they are able to
identify with them, and they can therefore envisage their misfortune
happening to themselves. Smithson ibid thus concludes:

This realization, that one is never exempt from pity and fear for one’s
own moral possibilities, is what I take to be Aristotle’s meaning of
 Catharsis 83

catharsis. Catharsis clarifies (even purges or purifies) an illusion

spectators have about their moral impregnability. The universal truth
that members of the audience learn and relearn through the catharsis
brought about by Oedipus Tyrannus and all tragedy is that life and action
have moral aspects, and that at any time circumstances may force them
into a position in which their character is assessed. The tragic pleasure
the unified plot affords and that accompanies, intensifies, and com-
pletes the experiencing of tragedy is the observer’s being forced momen-
tarily to accept that his or her life has moral implications.
(1983, 16)

The notion of ‘purgation’ that is at the root of this view of the effects of
tragedy has often been interpreted in therapeutic terms, for the
moralistic interpretation of catharsis sometimes incorporates a ‘medical
analogy’ (first put forward by Aristotle himself in Politics 8). The French
classical scholar André Dacier (1651–1722), for instance, described trag-
edy as ‘une veritable medicine’ (ibid., 351).8 The English poet, scholar
and pamphleteer John Trapp (1679–1747) further developed this physi-
ological metaphor into a ‘homeopathic’ one, whereby tragedy purges
the passion by agitating them in a process that is similar to the way in
which, in medical practice, the ‘humours’ of the body are often agitated
by medicines of the same nature (for example, acids by acids, etc.) in
order to be neutralised (Herrick 1926, 158). As the following analysis
will show, this ramification of the Aristotelian view of the didactic
function of tragic performance will prove most influential in shaping
theories of the formative role of the arts.

Emotional fortitude

The second position on catharsis, often overlapping with the first one, is
the one that sees the effect of tragedy in the acquisition of emotional for-
titude9 through the witnessing, on the stage, of the greater sufferings of
the tragic characters. In this view, then, the formative role of the theatre
lies in making the audience less susceptible to the consequences of ‘pity
and fear’ by making them accustomed to the disruptive effects of misfor-
tune, so that, should they ever find themselves in similar circumstances,
they might be in a position to bear them more easily. In many ways this
view is also linked to the ‘homeopathic’ aspect of the notion of catharsis
referred to above: the audience grows emotionally stronger by living
through a theatrical experienced based on the very emotions (pity and
fear) that are toughened in the process. Hence, in this view – which also
84 The Social Impact of the Arts

gained popularity during the Renaissance and the Spanish Golden Age
(eighteenth century)10 – the reduction of emotional susceptibility is in
itself the ultimate goal of tragic performances (Halliwell 1986, 351–2). A
notable advocate of this view was Hegel, who referring back explicitly to
Aristotle’s Poetics, argued that the representation of human passions,
emotions and troubles, moves us to reflect on them, and so reduces the
grip that those emotions have on us (Hammermeister 2002, 94).

Moderation

The third interpretation of catharsis, which Halliwell calls ‘of moderation’,

relies on two central notions in Aristotle’s thinking on ethics, namely the
concept of the mean and habitus. The difference from the earlier position
rests on the fact that, rather than a simple reduction of the audience’s
susceptibility to the emotions of pity and fear, in this version of catharsis,
the audience goes through a process of ‘psychological attunement or bal-
ance’ (Halliwell 1986, 352). This might entail a heightened or reduced
receptiveness to emotions, depending on what is required by each audi-
ence member to reach the desirable ‘mean’ (or, in other words, balance).
As Dorsch (1965, 19) maintains, by catharsis, Aristotle ‘means their resto-
ration to the right proportions, to the desirable ‘ “mean” ’, which is the
basis of his discussion of human qualities in the Ethics’. It is through
repeated experience of the cathartic process that audiences can develop a
habitus, and thus learn to feel the emotions in question in the right way
and to the right degree. The English poet John Milton (1608–1674), in the
preface to his Samson Agonistas (1671) offers the only example of this
interpretation of the tragic catharsis in early English criticism:

Tragedy, as it was anciently compos’d, hath been ever held the grav-
est, moralest, and most profitable of all other Poems: therefore said
by Aristotle, to be of power by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge
the mind of those and such like passions, that is, to temper and reduce
them to just measure with a kind of delight, stirr’d up by reading or
seeing those passions well imitated. Nor is Nature wanting in her
own effects to make good his assertion: for so in Physic things of
melancholic hue and quality are us’d against melancholy, sowr
against sowr, salt to remove salt humours.
(in Herrick 1926, 159; emphasis added)11

More recently, Ernst Cassirer has taken it upon himself to reformulate

this view for a twentieth-century readership. In his An Essay on Man
 Catharsis 85

(1944, 148–9), he argues that the cathartic process as intended by

Aristotle does not refer to a process of purgation or any similar transfor-
mation in the passions represented on the stage. For Cassirer, the locus
of transformation is the human soul which achieves, through the aes-
thetic experience, ‘a state of rest and peace’:

The highest intensification of our emotional life is thought of as at

the same time giving us a sense of repose. We live through all our
passions feeling their full range and highest tension. But what we
leave behind when passing the threshold of art is the hard pressure,
the compulsion of our emotions. The tragic poet is not the slave but
the master of his emotions; and he is able to transfer this mastery to
the spectators. In his work we are not swayed and carried away by
our emotions. Aesthetic freedom is not the absence of passion, not
Stoic apathy, but just the contrary. It means that our emotional life
acquires its greatest strength, and that in this very strength it changes
its form. For here we no longer live in the immediate reality of things
but in a world of pure sensuous forms. In this world all our feelings
undergo a sort of transubstantiation with respect to their essence and their
character.
(1994, 148; emphasis added)

Emotional release

The fourth interpretation identified by Halliwell is the one that has

proven predominant in modern times, and it is the one that sees cathar-
sis as a process of ‘emotional release or outlet’, whereby the theatrical
performance effectively provides a means of expending any pent-up or
extreme emotions. According to this view, the question of tragic pleas-
ure (or in other words, the question of why spectators enjoy witnessing
painful and upsetting events on stage) is resolved by recourse to the
idea of ‘psychic discharge’; though audiences are not aware that this
process is taking place, its beneficial effects can be noted nonetheless
(Nuttall 1996, 39). This view is heavily indebted to the already men-
tioned therapeutic approach to the purging role of tragedy championed
by Jacob Bernays in the late nineteenth century. In the view here under
examination, however, the medical analogy becomes paramount, so
that emphasis is placed entirely on the idea of therapeutic relief from
passions through the theatrical experience at the expense of any ethical
dimension of the process (which, as we have seen earlier, was an
86 The Social Impact of the Arts

important element of the ‘pathological’ view elaborated by the Italian

Renaissance critics, Milton and Dacier). The most significant modern
re-interpretation of this therapeutic view is represented by the notion
that a person’s recognition of personal experiences being reflected in
the action on stage can result in those experiences and emotions (usu-
ally troubling to the individual in question) being ‘resolved’. In other
words, in this view, theatrical performances afford audiences the pos-
sibility of confronting ambiguous and troubling issues in their own
lives (Meisiek 2004, 802).
The most influential example of such an understanding of catharsis
(here extended to the entire sphere of artistic expression, or just expres-
sion tout court) is without doubts the elaboration by Freud and his col-
league Breuer of what they referred to as the ‘cathartic method’ for the
treatment of hysteria (Breuer and Freud 1955 [1893–5]). Freud and Breuer’s
central idea was that repressed negative emotions can build up within an
individual and ultimately cause psychological symptoms. The cathartic
method they devised, thus, was centred on the importance of the release
of the emotional state that was originally associated with the traumatic
experience. Freud called the procedure by which the analyst helps the
patient relive and discharge past, traumatic emotions, ‘abreaction’. The
key aspects of the cathartic method appear in their clearest form in the
discussion that Freud and Breuer (ibid., 21–47) offer of the case of Anna
O., one of Breuer’s patients. Breuer observed that the only way to relieve
Anna of her symptoms was to allow her to describe her emotions during
the hypnotic sessions and indulge in her favourite poetical ways of
expressing them (she referred to her hypnosis sessions as ‘the clouds’12):

If during this [the ‘clouds’] she was able to narrate the hallucinations
she had had in the course of the day, she would wake up clear in
mind, calm and cheerful. She would sit down to work and write or
draw far into the night quite rationally. [...] If for any reason she was
unable to tell me the story during her evening hypnosis she failed to
calm down afterwards, and on the following day she had to tell me
two stories in order for this to happen.
(1955, 27 and 29)

Having followed the cathartic method for some time, however, Freud
became frustrated with its limitations, and begun work on the develop-
ment of psychoanalysis. Nevertheless, the influence of Freud’s (and
Breuer’s) early work on catharsis and abreaction has undoubtedly been
most influential in shaping understanding of the cathartic effects of the
 Catharsis 87

arts in the twentieth century. Although the extent of such influence

cannot satisfactorily be discussed here, we would suggest that a good
example of contemporary theories ultimately rooted in Aristotle’s notion
of catharsis as mediated by Freud are represented by the work of American
sociologist Thomas J. Scheff (1979). He has argued that catharsis through
the theatrical experience is made possible by a physical reaction to
emotional experiences (such as laughing or crying at what happens on
the stage). These outwards signs confirm that, whilst watching the per-
formance, the members of the audience project their emotions onto the
characters of the play, and so are released themselves from the grip of
those emotions. The therapeutic value of this experience is obvious, espe-
cially when negative emotions are thus projected and neutralised. Whilst
this is largely an unconscious process and the spectator is likely to assume
that the emotions felt are a product of the performance, in reality, the
performance allows him or her to let go of pre-existing feelings relating
to troubling past experiences (Meisiek 2004, 803).
The development of psychotherapeutic theatre by the likes of Jacob L.
Moreno (1889–1974) is also indebted to Aristotle’s theory of catharsis.
Moreno developed the concept and practice of ‘psychodrama’, a method
of group therapy (but also, in Moreno’s view, a mode of living) based on
the use of a dramatic format and theatrical terms (Holmes 1991, 7).
Moreno argued that in the practice of psychodrama,13 a cathartic proc-
ess occurs that ‘produces a healing effect – not in the spectator (second-
ary catharsis) but in the producer-actors who produce the drama and, at
the same time, liberate themselves from it’ (Moreno 1974 [1940]).
Though not strictly concerned with the therapeutic aspects of cathar-
sis, Constantin Stanislavsky’s psychodynamic acting method is also
inscribed in the Aristotelian tradition, mediated by psychoanalytical
considerations. In his book An Actor Prepares (1937), Stanislavsky tries to
bring together the work of the playwright and the actors with the empa-
thetic response of audiences in the concept of emotion memory, which
he explains thus:

Just as your visual memory can reconstruct an inner image of some

forgotten thing, place or person, your emotion memory can bring
back feelings you have already experienced. They may seem to be
beyond recall, when suddenly a suggestion, a thought, a familiar
object will bring them back in full force. Sometimes the emotions
are as strong as ever, sometimes weaker, sometimes the same strong
feelings will come back but in a somewhat different guise.
(1937, 168)
88 The Social Impact of the Arts

For Stanislavsky, then, the process starts with the actor attempting to
get a sense of his or her role. Guided by the work of the playwright,
actors must try to establish a link between the emotions expressed in
the script and their own past experiences: ‘Those feelings, drawn from
our actual experience, and transferred to our part, are what give life to
the play. [...] All external production is formal, cold, and pointless if it is
not motivated from within’ (ibid., 164). The actor must subsequently
project his/her own feelings onto his/her role, thereby allowing the
audience to empathetically share in them, so that, ultimately, the emo-
tional burden lies with the actor, rather than the audience (as in most
cathartic theories of drama).14 For Stanislavsky, the essence of catharsis
lies precisely in this remembering of past experiences and emotions,
which – if negative – lose their harmful character in the process of being
brought back to consciousness and harnessed by the actor in order to
get into the spirit of the part.
Theories of theatrical catharsis as a way of developing motivation for
action, which is at the heart of Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed
(2000), can also be seen as a contemporary derivation of the therapeutic
interpretation of Aristotelian catharsis. Boal however, starts from a cri-
tique of what he refers to as ‘Aristotle’s coercive system of tragedy function’
(ibid., 36), on the basis that any limitation of theatrical action on the basis
of a fixed set of patterns of action is a form of coercion and oppression
(Boal refers here to the prescriptions for plot and character development
to be found in Aristotle’s Poetics). Boal argues that the theatre can pro-
duce an emotional dissonance in the audience – which might, in turn,
spur its members into action in their real lives. The ultimate aim of the
theatrical experience is indeed the dissolution of all forms of both
physical and psychological oppression, and the cathartic moment has a
central role in the theatrical mission (see also Meisiek 2004, 809–13).

Intellectual catharsis

Another important version of theatrical catharsis identified by Halliwell

(1986) is that of intellectual catharsis, whereby the emotional aspects of
the theatrical experience become secondary compared with its alleged
cognitive value. One of the most prominent proponents of this view is
Leon Golden (1962), who arrives at his conclusion by connecting the
references to ka9 uarsin in the close of the definition of tragedy with
what Aristotle said about the way men learn in Chapter 4 of the Poetics.
Here Aristotle maintains that imitation is the most natural way for men
to learn. Aristotle fundamentally agrees with Plato on the mimetic
 Catharsis 89

nature of art and poetry, and indeed states this quite explicitly in the
opening chapter of the Poetics. However, whereas the imitative nature
of poetry, as we have seen, was the basis for Plato’s denial of any cogni-
tive function for poetry, Aristotle, though starting from the same
assumption, comes to a much different conclusion. Aristotle argues that
it is precisely because of its mimetic nature that poetry can carry out its
educational role. Learning, indeed, is, according to Aristotle, one of the
goals of all poetry. The learning process as described in Book 4 of the
Poetics is thus summarised by Golden:

The act of learning which Aristotle refers to can be most clearly

understood to mean the act of inferring, from the particular act wit-
nessed in the artistic presentation, the universal class to which this
act belongs. The artist so organizes his work that the spectator is able
to infer, from the individual circumstances pictured before him, the
universal law which subsumes them. This movement from the par-
ticular to the universal involves a learning process in that it renders
clearer and more distinct the significance of the events presented in
the work of art.
(1962, 53–4)

This is precisely why, Aristotle argues in Chapter 4 of the Poetics, we

take pleasure in witnessing unpleasant events (such as in tragedy), as
the pleasure is, in fact, a result of the learning process that those unpleas-
ant events witnessed on stage bring about. On the grounds of the obser-
vation that kauaro9§ – the adjectival form that share the same root as
ka9uarsi§ – in classical Greek also meant ‘clear’ in an intellectual sense,
Golden (ibid., 56–7) argues that Aristotle had this particular metaphor-
ical meaning in mind when he chose to conclude his definition of trag-
edy in Chapter 6 with the word ‘ka 9 uarsin’: ‘Thus it becomes possible to
9
translate kauarsi§, on the basis of this evidence, as the act of “making
clear” or the process of “clarification” by means of which something
that is intellectually obscure is made clear to an observer.’
As Martha Nussbaum (1986, 389), another advocate of this position
points out, this usage of kauaro9§ to mean intellectual clarification was
current at the time when Aristotle was writing his Poetics, having already
been brought into common use by none other than Plato in his Republic.
Here, and in the Phaedrus, Plato asserts that katharos cognition is indeed
what we have whenever the soul is not hampered by bodily obstacles
and constrictions. Hence, Nussbaum (ibid.) concludes, ‘Katharsis is the
clearing up of the vision of the soul by the removal of these obstacles;
90 The Social Impact of the Arts

thus the katharon becomes associated with the true or truly knowable,
the being who has achieved katharsis with the truly or correctly know-
ing.’ It is precisely on the basis of this influential precedent that
Nussbaum feels entitled to assert that Aristotle’s epistemological use of
the term and notion of catharsis to indicate the removal of a pre-existing
obstacle (and, hence, a process of intellectual clarification) as ‘easy and
natural’.15

Dramatic or structural catharsis

The final interpretation of catharsis that Halliwell identifies is the one

he refers to as dramatic or structural catharsis, which posits that catharsis
is not a phenomenon concerning the audience of a tragic performance,
but rather an internal feature of the dramatic text. One of its modern
proponents is Gerald Else (1963, 439), who defines catharsis as ‘a transi-
tive or operational factor within the tragic structure itself’, and explains:
‘Thus the catharsis is not a change or end-product in the spectator’s
soul, or in the fear and pity (i.e., the dispositions to them) in his soul,
but a process carried forward in the emotional material of the play by
its structural elements, above all by the recognition.’ By recognition,
here, Else means the part of the play where it becomes clear that the
misfortune that has befallen upon the tragic hero is not deserved, and
that he is, in fact, not guilty, and his motives were not miaro9n, that is,
morally repellent.
The structural view of catharsis has had, over time, illustrious propo-
nents, such as, for instance, Goethe, who in his Gleanings from Aristotle’s
Poetics (1826) made a case for it, and proposed to translate the contro-
versial passage in Chapter 6 of the Poetics as ‘tragedy is the imitation of
a significant and completed action, which after a pitiful and fearful
course completes its business with the stabilizing of such passions’ (in
Bernays 2004, 321). Bernays (ibid.) has gone to great lengths to prove
that Goethe’s translation is incompatible with the usage and grammar
of the classical Greek language. Questions of philological propriety
aside, this last interpretation of catharsis has been the least fruitful in
terms of originating a distinct intellectual tradition, and it is also the
least relevant to the present discussion.
What are we to make of this necessarily abbreviated discussion of the
notion of catharsis and its numerous interpretations? Whilst it is prob-
ably unlikely that an agreement will ever be reached amongst classical
scholars, philosophers and literary critics over what Aristotle really
meant by ka 9 uarsi§, it is beyond doubt that – by presenting a radically
 Catharsis 91

different and contrasting view of the function of theatre and poetry

than that offered by Plato’s Republic – Aristotle has made a very
significant contribution to the development of a positive intellectual
tradition that attributes to the arts a formative and moral function. As
we will see, this strand of aesthetic thought has developed in original
and creative ways over the two and a half millennia that separate us
from Aristotle’s times, forming a major component of the European
intellectual tradition and becoming one of the cornerstones for systems
of public subsidy of the arts throughout the West.
4
Personal Well-Being

The claims grouped under this category can be seen, in many respects,
as a derivation of Aristotle’s theory of catharsis that was discussed in
Chapter 3. In these cases, the medical metaphor which, as we have
seen, has been at the centre of an interpretative debate over Aristotle’s
definition of tragedy in the Poetics, has been developed into full-blown
new theoretical developments focusing on the effects of the arts on
individuals’ well-being and, more recently, quality of life. Two main
derivations of the original Aristotelian ideas can be identified under
the heading of ‘theories claiming that the arts can be beneficial to per-
sonal health and well-being’, one more theoretical, the other more
pragmatic in its nature and aims.

Pleasure and enjoyment

On a more theoretical and philosophical level, the point that the

enjoyment of art can result in a pleasurable experience that enhances
personal well-being was made, amongst others, by Immanuel Kant
(1724–1804). For Kant, the arts have primarily a cognitive function,
and the aesthetic pleasure lies precisely in the constant attempt –
never successful – to move from imagination to understanding through
the aesthetic experience (Hammermeister 2002, 30). However, in his
Critique of Judgement (1790), he argues that even when the artistic
experience is just too removed from conceptual cognition to bring
anything more than simple enjoyment, such enjoyment, whilst it
should not be confused with enjoyment of the sublime, is in itself

92
 Personal Well-Being 93

beneficial for man’s well-being, both physical and mental. In Kant’s

own words:

The agreeable lassitude we feel after being stirred up by the play of

affects is our enjoyment of the well-being that results from the estab-
lishment of the equilibrium of our various vital forces. This enjoy-
ment comes to no more in the end than what Oriental voluptuaries
find so appealing when they have their bodies thoroughly kneaded,
as it were, and have all their muscles and joints gently squeezed and
bent – except that in the first case the moving principle is for the
most part within us, whereas in the second it is wholly outside us.
Thus many people believe they are edified by a sermon that in fact
builds no edifice (no system of good maxims), or are improved by the
performance of a tragedy when in fact they are merely glad at having
succeeded in routing boredom.
(1987 edn, 134)

As we will see in the second part of this chapter, a similar understand-

ing of the role that the enjoyment of the arts can have in determining
well-being is at the heart of modern concepts of ‘art therapy’.

Relief from ‘will’

Schopenhauer’s understanding of aesthetic pleasure is not dissimilar

from Kant’s (Janaway 1994, 59). In his The World as Will and
Representation (1819), however, Schopenhauer brings his own distinc-
tive nuance to the concept, whereby art is seen as one of the few means
of protection from the anguish brought about by the unbeara-
ble human condition. As Hammermeister (2002, 111) observes,
Schopenhauer’s writings ‘signal the beginning of the dismantling of
the idealist tradition’. The main – and, according to Hammermeister,
the most problematic – symptom of such departure is the ‘individual-
ist turn’ of Schopenhauer’s thinking, as a result of which art is no
longer considered as tied to a community (be it a universal commu-
nity of mankind, as for Kant, or Hegel’s notion of a community based
in the nation state). For him, art becomes important only from the
point of view of the isolated individual that finds in the artistic expe-
rience a way to escape, at least temporarily, from an unbearable human
existence and the responsibilities and pressures brought about by com-
munal life. In other words, the engagement with the aesthetic brings
94 The Social Impact of the Arts

about not a higher form of engagement with the world, but rather an
attempt to withdraw from it (ibid., 112–13).
The desire for a withdrawal from the world is easier to understand in
the light of the deep pessimism that runs through Schopenhauer’s
thinking and is reflected in his writing. He believed the life of man to be
‘a constant struggle against want or boredom’ and the world to be ‘Hell,
and men are on the one hand the tormented souls and on the other the
devils in it’ (in Hyland 1985, 221). The full extent of the darkness of
Schopenhauer’s vision (and, thus, the importance of the relief provided
by the arts) clearly transpires form these words of advice to his reader:

As a reliable compass for orientating yourself in life nothing is more

useful than to accustom yourself to regarding this world as a place
of atonement, a sort of penal colony. When you have done this you
will order your expectations of life according to the nature of things
and no longer regard the calamities, sufferings, torments and miser-
ies of life as something irregular [...] but will find them entirely in
order.
(in Hyland 1985, 221)

For Schopenhauer, then, the arts afford man a much needed form of
‘consolation’: as Janaway (1996, 47) explains, ‘the tranquil contempla-
tion of art gives us a pleasant and valuable aesthetic experience. Dwelling
on the perception of some particular thing’s beauty is therapeutic
because it frees the mind from the pains and strivings associated with
the body albeit temporarily.’ The function of the arts as tempo-
rary remedy to the anguish of life is closely related to the notion of
‘will’, since the crucial problems of aesthetics is – according to
Schopenhauer – precisely ‘how satisfaction with and pleasure in an
object are possible without any reference thereof to our willing’ (in
Janaway 1994, 59). What Schopenhauer precisely meant by ‘will’ is a
much debated and complicated question, which lies beyond the scope
of the present study. However, in the already mentioned The World as
Will and Representation, Schopenhauer, in a distinction reminiscent of
Plato, describes the two faces of reality: ‘representation’, that is, the
way the world presents itself to us in everyday experience, and ‘will’,
that is, the world as it is in itself, and beyond the mere appearances of
which human knowledge is constituted (Janaway 1994, 6). Janaway
(ibid.) suggests that the best way to understand the concept of ‘will’ is
to conceive it as a form of unrelenting yet blind ‘striving forward’
for something. Art, thus, offers man some respite from the usual
 Personal Well-Being 95

domination of the will and this never-fulfilled quest and the resulting
suffering.1 In Schopenhauer’s words:

so long as our consciousness is filled by our will, so long as we are

given up to the throng of desires with its constant hopes and fears,
so long as we are the subject of willing, we never attain lasting hap-
piness or peace. Essentially, it is all the same whether we pursue or
flee, fear harm or aspire to enjoyment; care for the constantly
demanding will, no matter in what form, continually fills and moves
consciousness; but without peace and calm, true well-being is abso-
lutely impossible. [...] When, however, an external cause or inward
disposition suddenly raises us out of the endless stream of willing,
and snatches knowledge from the thraldom of the will, the atten-
tion is now no longer directed to the motives of willing, but compre-
hends things free from the relation to the will. Thus it considers
things without interest, without subjectivity, purely objectively [...].
Then all at once the peace, always sought but always escaping us on
that first path of willing, comes to us of its own accord, and all is
well with us [...]. [F]or that moment we are delivered from the miser-
able pressure of the will. We celebrate the Sabbath of the penal ser-
vitude of willing, the wheel of Ixion stands still.
(Schopenhauer 1969 edn, vol. I; 196)

The reason why the arts are a privileged source of temporary respite
from the will is that aesthetic pleasure can offer ‘a deliverance of knowl-
edge from the service of the will, the forgetting of oneself as individual,
and the enhancement of consciousness to the pure, will-less, timeless
subject of knowing that is independent of all relations’ (ibid., 199). For
example, Schopenhauer explains, a precious spiritual peace can be
found in Dutch paintings of still life:

The aesthetic beholder does not contemplate this without emo-

tion, for it graphically describes to him the calm, tranquil, will-
free frame of mind of the artist which was necessary for
contemplating such insignificant things so objectively, consider-
ing them so attentively, and repeating this perception with such
thought. Since the picture invited the beholder to participate in
this state, his emotion is often enhanced by the contrast between
it and his own restless state of mind, disturbed by vehement will-
ing, in which he happens to be. In the same spirit landscape paint-
ers, especially Ruysdael, have often painted extremely insignificant
96 The Social Impact of the Arts

landscape objects, and have thus produced the same effect even
more delightfully.
(1969 edn, vol. I; 197)

It is, however, music that Schopenhauer considers as ‘the most

powerful of all the arts’, since it can bring about a relief from will
‘entirely from its own resources’. Here is why:

Because music does not, like all the other arts, exhibit the Ideas or
graders of the will’s objectification, but directly the will itself, we can
also explain that it acts directly on the will, i.e., the feelings, passions
and emotions of the hearer, so that it quickly raises these or even
alters them (1969 edn, vol. II; 448).

In work and in leisure

Other thinkers have similarly asserted that pleasure, well-being, or a

sense of fulfilment can result from aesthetic experiences, and the follow-
ing brief survey will therefore not aspire to be exhaustive, but merely
suggestive of the arguments elaborated in this area. In his 1886 essay
entitled ‘The Aims of Art’, for instance, William Morris (1834–1896) dis-
cusses the purpose of art in man’s life, and investigates the psychological
motivations behind the making and the enjoyment of art, which he
claims to be ultimately rooted in pleasure.2 Morris distinguished two
main ‘moods’ that dominate man’s life, the mood of ‘energy’, which
moves us towards activity, and the mood of ‘idleness’, which invites us to
seek rest. The making of art therefore satisfies the mood of energy, whilst
enjoyment of the arts during leisure time provides a contemplative pleas-
ure that suits the mood of idleness. In both cases, it is clear that the pre-
ponderant aim of art is to provide man with pleasure. In Morris’s edn
own words:

I suppose, indeed, that nobody will be inclined to deny that the end
proposed by a work of art is always to please the person whose senses
are to be made conscious of it. It was done for some one who was to
be made happier by it; his idle or restful mood was to be amused by
it. [...] The restraining of restlessness, therefore, is clearly one of the
essential aims of art, and few things could add to the pleasure of life
more than this.
(1966 edn, 82)
 Personal Well-Being 97

Hence, Morris’s conclusions on the fundamental function of art:

Therefore the Aim of Art is to increase the happiness of men, by

giving them beauty and interest of incident to amuse their leisure,
and prevent them wearying even of rest, and by giving them hope
and bodily pleasure in their work; or, shortly, to make man’s work
happy and his rest fruitful. Consequently, genuine art is an unmixed
blessing to the race of man.
(1966 edn, 84)

Fulfilled time

An alternative way of articulating the pleasure derived from the arts is

represented by the view according to which the value of the arts resides
in our complete commitment and absorption when creating or enjoy-
ing a work of art; in this perspective, the arts provide us with a way to
‘fulfil’ our time (Koopman 2005). One of the main proponents of this
notion of ‘art as fulfilment’ is Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002), who,
in his essay ‘The Relevance of the Beautiful’, distinguishes between two
‘fundamental ways of experiencing time’:

In the context of our normal, pragmatic experience of time, we say

that we ‘have time for something.’ This time is at our disposal; it is
divisible; it is the time that we have or do not have, or at least
think we do not have. In its temporal structure, such time is empty
and needs to be filled. Boredom is an extreme example of this
empty time. When bored, we experience the featureless and repet-
itive flow of time as an agonizing presence. In contrast to the emp-
tiness of boredom, there is the different emptiness of frantic bustle
when we never have enough time for anything and yet constantly
have things to do. [...] These two extremes of bustle and boredom
both represent time in the same way: we fill our time with some-
thing or we have nothing to do. Either way time is not experienced
in its own right, but as something that has to be ‘spent’. There is in
addition, however, a totally different experience of time which I
think is profoundly related to the kind of time characteristic of
both the festival and the work of art. In contrast with the empty
time that needs to be filled, I propose to call this ‘fulfilled’ or
‘autonomous’ time.
(1986, 41–2)
98 The Social Impact of the Arts

Gadamer, then, clarifies his thought by using the festival, and its
temporal dimension, as a paradigm for the arts, arguing that enjoyment
of the arts, as well as the festival, represent a case of ‘fulfilled time’:

We all know that the festival fulfils every moment of its duration.
This fulfilment does not come about because someone has empty
time to fill. On the contrary, the time only becomes festive with the
arrival of the festival. [...] We do not calculate here, nor do we simply
add up a gradual sequence of empty moments to arrive at a totality
of time. [...] It is of the nature of the festival that it should proffer
time, arresting it and allowing it to tarry. That is what festive celebra-
tion means. The calculating way in which we normally manage and
dispose of our time is, as it were, brought to a standstill. It is easy to
make a transition from such temporal experiences of life to the work
of art.
(1986, 42)

Gadamer goes on to argue that it is the organic unity of the work

(whereby every detail of the work of art is an integral part of the whole)
that produces the effects of fulfilment.

Art as ‘experience’

Fulfilment is also a central notion in John Dewey’s (1859–1952) under-

standing of art. In his Art as Experience (1934), Dewey defines fulfilment
as a completed experience and identifies the arts as a domain that allows
for completed experiences to happen. Dewey begins his argument with
the observation that the interaction of every living creature with its
environment necessarily results in experiences. Most of the experiences
we encounter in everyday life, however, are ‘inchoate’. As Dewey himself
explains:

Things are experienced but not in such a way that they are com-
posed into an experience. There is distraction and dispersion; what
we observe and what we think, what we desire and what we get are at
odds with each other.
(1980 edn, 35; emphasis in the original)

In contrast, we have ‘an experience’, whenever, ‘the material experi-

enced runs its course to fulfilment’ (ibid.). In this case, the experience
becomes integrated in the general ‘stream of experiences’ that is our
 Personal Well-Being 99

life, without, however, losing its distinctiveness: ‘such an experience is

a whole and carries with it its own individualising quality and
self-sufficiency’. In Dewey’s view, then, the arts provide us with
exemplary instances of an experience:

the esthetic is no intruder in experience from without, whether by

way of idle luxury or transcendent ideality, but [...] it is the clarified
and intensified development of traits that belong to every normally com-
plete experience.
(1980 edn, 46; emphasis added)

Importantly, when referring to the aesthetic experience, Dewey, in

fact, refers to both the case of artistic creation – art as ‘a process of
doing or making’ – and the aesthetic experience as ‘appreciative, per-
ceiving and enjoying’ (ibid., 47). Both types of activity can indeed
result in a fulfilling aesthetic experience. 3 Jackson clearly summarises
Dewey’s ideas thus:

In either case, the experience, when successful – when it truly is an

experience – is characterized at its close (and often periodically
during its course) by feelings of satiety and fulfilment. What is
fulfilling from either perspective is not simply the object or the
performance, although we often speak as though it were [...] .
Actually, it is the audience’s encounter with the object or perform-
ance, or the artist’s wrestling with the stuff of its making that
proves to be the source of their enjoyment or suffering. The true
work of art is not the object that sits in a museum nor the perform-
ance captured on film or disc. Rather, it is the experience occa-
sioned by the production or the experience of appreciating objects
and performances. For the artist, those two forms of experiencing
are one.
(1998, 4–5)

Art as play

Other thinkers, such as Johan Huizinga (1970, 21) in Homo Ludens, have
compared the artistic experience to play, highlighting in particular the
element of the fun of playing: ‘it is precisely this fun-element that char-
acterizes the essence of play. Here we have to do with an absolutely
primary category of life, familiar to everybody at a glance right down to
the animal level.’ An important strand of Huizinga’s examination of
100 The Social Impact of the Arts

‘culture sub specie ludi’ is the close relation he identifies between play
and the arts. This is what he has to say about the close relationship
between play and poetry:

Let us enumerate once more the characteristics we deemed proper to

play. It is an activity which proceeds within certain limits of time
and space, in visible order, according to rules freely accepted, and
outside the sphere of necessity or material utility. The play-mood is
one of rapture and enthusiasm, and is sacred or festive in accordance
with the occasion. A feeling of exaltation and tension accompanies
the action, mirth and relaxation follow.
Now it can hardly be denied that these qualities are also proper to
poetic creation. In fact, the definition we have just given of play
might serve as a definition of poetry.
(1970, 154–5)4

As for the other thinkers discussed earlier, pleasure is a crucial aspect of

the aesthetic experience. Speaking of music in particular, Huizinga
(ibid., 184) declares:

But whereas all other creatures know now the distinction between
order and disorder which is called rhythm and harmony, to us
men [...] [the gods] have granted the perception of rhythm and har-
mony which is invariably accompanied by pleasure. Here, as clearly
as possible, a direct connexion is established between music
and play.
(1970, 184)

Evolutionary significance

More recently, this notion that the enjoyment of the arts has a role to
play in terms of our health and well-being has been expanded upon by
the American playwright David Mamet (1947–), who, in the essay Three
Uses of the Knife, puts forward his view of the arts – and drama in
particular – as the ultimate survival mechanism at man’s disposal:

Children jump around at the end of the day, to expend the last of
that day’s energy. The adult equivalent, when the sun goes down, is
to create or witness drama – which is to say, to order the universe
into a comprehensible form. Our sundown play/film/gossip is the
day’s last exercise of that survival mechanism. In it we attempt to
 Personal Well-Being 101

discharge any residual perceptive energies in order to sleep. We will

have drama in that spot, and if it’s not forthcoming we will cobble it
together out of nothing.
(1998, 8)

Mamet reinforces this point time and time again in the essay, as he
does, for instance, when attempting to explain why men have always
been captivated by drama:

It is enjoyable, like music, like politics, and like theatre, because

it exercises, it flatters, and it informs our capacity for rational
synthesis – our ability to learn a lesson, which is our survival
mechanism.
(1998, 11)

This view of artistic endeavours as being at the centre of what has

allowed man to survive and preserve his species has indeed been seized
upon by scientists, who have put forward the suggestion that intellec-
tual and artistic creativity and genius might all be explained in evolu-
tionary terms (Simonton 1999). Nettle (2001, 173), for instance, argues
that ‘[h]uman creative performance could well be, at root, a form of
sexual display’. At the basis of Nettle’s argument lies the empirical
observation that intelligence and creativity are indeed key determi-
nants of human mate choice. In other words, in the same way in which
a peacock displays his feathers in an attempt to make himself more
attractive to a potential mate, members of the human race have used
the products of artistic creativity and ‘cultural performance’ to make
themselves stand out from the crowd:

Pursuing cultural capital, then, is one way of increasing mating suc-

cess, and the main way to do this, across cultures, is through the
appropriate kind of creative performance.
(Nettle 2001, 175)

The evolutionary importance of creativity – and hence the arts and

culture – has also been underlined by the already mentioned Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi in his influential study of creativity:

Survival no longer depends on biological equipment alone but on

the social and cultural tools we choose to use. The inventions of the
great civilizations – the arts, religions, political systems, sciences and
102 The Social Impact of the Arts

technologies – signal the main stages along the path of cultural

evolution. To be humans means to be creative.
(1996, 318)

Indeed, a team of Swedish scientists (Konlaan, Bygren and Johansson

2000) has gone as far as suggesting that there might be a link between
attendance at cultural events and longevity. They interviewed in excess
of 10,000 randomly selected individuals of both sexes between the ages
of 25 and 74 in order to find out about their cultural habits. This cohort
was then observed with respect to survival for a period of 14 years. The
data thus collected pointed to the conclusion that, irrespective of gen-
der, ‘people who attend certain kinds of cultural events seem to live
longer than those who rarely do’ (ibid., 177). In particular, it was the
activities of attending cinema, concerts or visiting museums and arts
exhibitions for which the correlation with longevity was more signifi-
cant. The link between longevity and theatre attendance, however, was
found to be less significant (ibid., 176). The results were explained on
the basis of the fact that cultural participation might activate some ben-
eficial physiological processes that are associated with longevity, such
as, for instance, the stimulation of the production of growth hormones
and prolactin, which promote immunity, or of glucocortinoids, which
help the body cope with autoimmune disease. Despite the impossibility
of making a straightforward connection between arts participation and
these physical processes, the Swedish research team concluded optimis-
tically that ‘[t]he prognostic importance of changes in cultural stimula-
tion should be investigated and experiments initiated for verification’.
The arguments in favour of this theory of the evolutionary signifi-
cance of cultural performance and creativity could be seen as a deriva-
tion of the belief that the arts have a role to play in enhancing man’s
sense of well-being and his health, as well as his happiness.5 The most
common derivation of this claim, however, is represented by the grow-
ing discipline of ‘art therapy’, which represents the more pragmatic
strand of this category of function.

Art therapy

Art therapy can be defined as ‘the use of art in the service of change on
the part of the person who created the artwork’ (in Madden and Bloom
2004, 137). It has been argued (ibid.) that the arts therapy literature
generally shares a concern with art processes rather than art products,
and that such emphasis necessarily entails a particular attention to the
 Personal Well-Being 103

activities involving the production of culture, as opposed to the

enjoyment of art, through listening or viewing art.6 Yet, if any well-
being or health benefit can accrue from contact with the arts, the type
of involvement (creation or enjoyment) can be expected to be an impor-
tant determinant in the process.7
As was hinted at in the context of our discussion of Aristotle and the
notion of tragic catharsis, the belief in the therapeutic function of art has
a very long history, and one that is not limited to the West alone – incanta-
tion and poetry were major healing practices in Native American cultures
for millennia. Rafael Campo (2003, 31 ff.) – himself a medical doctor argu-
ing in favour of the healing powers of poetry – shows that similar beliefs
were also held in the East. In the Egyptian culture of the pharaonic age,
for instance, the connection between poetry and healing was made clear
by the ‘book of the dead’, a book containing charms, spells, and hymns to
the gods that was used as a guidebook of sorts in burying rituals, meant to
guide the soul of the deceased in its journey through the afterlife. The
ancient Greeks also believed poetry and healing to be inextricably linked,
and this close relationship found its embodiment in the god Apollo.
Apollo, one of the most powerful deities in the Greek pantheon, was at
the same time the god of poetry and healing. His symbols were the lyre,
usually played in accompaniment to poetry, and the staff, which today is
still identified with medicine. Stephen Rojcewicz (2004, 209 ff.) goes so far
as to suggest that the epic poems of Homer, one of the oldest examples of
poetry in Western civilisation to have survived, can be seen as ‘definite
precursors to supportive psychotherapy and to poetry therapy’, on the
grounds that therein Homer often refers to verbal methods of soothing
and comforting as an integral part of the therapeutic regime for the treat-
ment of war wounds. For instance, Rojcewicz (ibid., 210) singles out a pas-
sage in the Iliad, Book XV, in which Patroclus succours and attempts to
treat his wounded friend Eurypylus, which displays a significant ‘associa-
tion of soothing words and stories with soothing drugs’. Homer writes:

Patroclus sat [...]

In his friend Eurypylus’s shelter [...]
Trying to lift the soldier’s heart with stories,
Applying soothing drugs to his dreadful wound
As he sought to calm the black waves of pain.8

This passage, in fact, represents, according to Rojcewicz (ibid.) an early

instance ‘of the beneficial integration of psychotherapy with drug
treatment’. Similarly, in Rome, Aesculapius was the god associated with
104 The Social Impact of the Arts

physicians, on the grounds of being credited with the invention of

medicine; he was, however, also the father of the seven Muses, the god-
desses representing the various arts and generally reputed to provide
artistic inspiration to poets and artists. Moreover, the belief in the heal-
ing effects of poetry can also be traced within the Judeo-Christian tra-
dition, as illustrated by the Biblical poetry than can be found in the
Psalms and the Song of Solomon, containing both prayers and poetical
references that deal with the healing of a number of different condi-
tions ranging from depression to infertility (Campo 2003, 34).
This faith in the role of literature, and the arts in general, as an aide
to healing undoubtedly persists in the modern world, where the study
of the therapeutic function of the arts has generated a vast body of
literature which cannot, for reasons of space, be extensively discussed
here. However, within the category of art as psychotherapy, Madden and
Bloom – echoing a distinction reflected in the literature – distinguish
a ‘shamanic’ and a ‘mechanistic’ approach to arts therapies. This clas-
sification ultimately boils down to the distinction between the ‘art as
therapy’ approach versus the ‘art in therapy’ approach respectively:

The art as therapy considers the act of artistic creation as itself heal-
ing and cathartic. The art in therapy approach sees artistic creation
as an instrument for the clinician – as a tool for diagnosis, prognosis
and treatment.
(2004, 139)

The shamanic approach is of most interest to the present discussion. It is

typified by the belief in the inherently cathartic and thus healing property
of the artistic process. On the basis of such an approach – and the con-
comitant belief in the close relationship between emotional states and
image formation – claims have been made for the possibility of improving
the well-being of patients affected by mild depression just by getting them
to draw happy scenes (ibid.).9 This approach is also quite common in the
vast range of self-help or practice-oriented literature, where the natural
dimension of the healing properties of creative processes seems to be a
recurring theme. In one such manual, aimed at harnessing the healing
and transformative powers of the reader through a series of exercises, and
suitably titled The Soul’s Palette: Drawing on art’s transformative powers for
health and well-being, C. A. Malchiodi (2002, 11) argues that:

Art therapy, the use of the creative process for emotional restoration
and healing, grew out of the idea that images are symbolic
 Personal Well-Being 105

communications and that art making helps us to express and trans-

form difficult life experiences. It has expanded our understanding of
how image making and imagination help during the dark night of
the soul, carrying forward the ancient knowledge of art’s healing
powers as well as the work of Freud and Jung. Artistic expression is
one of our elemental tools for achieving psychological integration, a
universal creative urge that helps us strive for emotional well-being.

Equally, language-based artistic expression has been claimed to affect

health positively, and the literature purporting the beneficial effects of
both writing creatively and reading (the latter being usually referred to
as ‘bibliotherapy’) in both helping patients to deal with their condition
as well as improving their well-being has been steadily growing in the
last few decades.10 Bibliotherapy, in particular, has been usefully
employed, for instance, in therapy for mild to moderate depression11
(Scrogin, Jamison and Gochneaur 1989) and in dealing with aggressive
children (Shechtman 1999). This technique can be defined as using lit-
erature to bring about a therapeutic interaction between participant (in
other words, the patient) and facilitator (the therapist) (McCarty Hynes
and Hynes-Berry 1994, 9–10).
Bibliotherapy is based on a long-lived belief in the healing powers of
works of literature. As Riordan and Wilson (1989, 506) remind us, a
plaque on the entrance to the famous library of ancient Thebes read
‘the healing place of the soul’. Indeed, the logic behind bibliotherapy
lies in the conviction that the discussion of the questions raised by a
piece of literature can lead members of the group (for this is a group
therapy) to reflect upon their own circumstances, and arrive at a fresh
view of life. If the insight so gained is successfully internalised by the
participants, it might lead to a change of behaviour and to a reduction
in the symptoms of the psychological pathology. The idea that poetry-
writing is a powerful means of healing was behind the involvement of
the poet Ben Okri, in 2005, in the setting up, in Britain, of a new organ-
isation called Mental Fight Club which aims to encourage people suffer-
ing from mental health problems to join in groups and discuss and
perform poetry and fiction (Quarmby 2005). Other arts forms have also
been found to have a therapeutic and healing potential, as in the case
of ‘cinematherapy’ (Sharp, Smith and Cole 2002) and music therapy
(Alridge 1996 and Biley 2000).
Indeed, following developments towards the full acceptance of the
broad definition of health provided, in 1948, by the World Health
Organization as ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social
106 The Social Impact of the Arts

well-being and not merely the absence of disease’, the arts have been
found to have a significant role to play in achieving this delicate equi-
librium between the domains of good physical and mental functioning,
and the social environment (Staricoff 2004, 24). Mental health, in par-
ticular, has been an area where the application of art therapies has
proved more fruitful.12 This is because enjoyment of the arts or artistic
creation encourages self-expression, which is positively correlated with
emotional health; furthermore, enhanced expressiveness can ease the
resolution of inner conflicts, thus also promoting emotional well-being
(Madden and Bloom 2004, 139).

* * *

In conclusion, this chapter has offered a review of theories focusing

around the belief that the arts can improve health and well-being.
Writings in these area can be divided into two broad groups One focuses
on the notion of pleasure-giving as a central function of the aesthetic
experience; the other highlights the therapeutic role of both artistic
production and consumption in our everyday life as well as in a medi-
cal setting. Claims for the powers of the arts to heal and promote well-
being can be partly attributed to the progressive importance gained, in
the last 30 years, by the notion of ‘quality of life’ in public policy debates
(Guyatt, Feeny and Patrick 1993; Bren 2006).13 However, as the present
discussion has attempted to show, the origin of such arguments goes
back far in time, and is ultimately related to the Aristotelian notion of
tragic catharsis discussed earlier. The next chapter will discuss the argu-
ments made for the formative and educational powers of the arts. As we
will see, this is also a theme that can be seen as originating from
Artistotelian arguments.
5
Education and Self-Development

As was discussed earlier, Plato’s suspicion of the arts – poetry and theatre
in particular – derived from his belief in the strong hold they have on
the human psyche. By affecting the irrational part of the psyche, the
arts can affect both the ethical sphere and human behaviour. However,
precisely because of that hold the arts have on us, if their content and
form is carefully directed and censored by the state (so as to ensure that
the feelings and emotions instilled through the artistic experience are
desirable ones) the powers of the arts can be harnessed for the good of
the polity (Belfiore 2006a). As Plato himself explains in the Republic:

The point is that a young person can’t tell when something is alle-
gorical and when it isn’t, and any idea admitted by a person of that
[young] age tends to become almost ineradicable and permanent. All
things considered, then, that is why a great deal of importance
should be placed upon ensuring that the first stories they hear are
best adapted for their moral improvement.
(1993 edn: 73; 378d)

This notion of the positive potential of the arts was seized upon by
Aristotle, who tried to give it a stronger articulation. Aristotle, as we
have seen, maintained that it is not desirable to kill or to starve the
emotional part of the psyche, since a balanced experience of passions
and feelings (as afforded by the tragic performance) is actually impor-
tant to maintaining the equilibrium of the human psyche (Butcher
1951, 246). On these grounds, then, Aristotle argued that dramatic
poetry, when properly structured (according to the indications provided
in his Poetics), could both educate the unruly emotions, and transmit
universal truths (Lamarque 2001, 455). The ultimate aim of Aristotle’s

107
108 The Social Impact of the Arts

response to Plato, however, was to free poetry from enslavement to the

ethical sphere. As Butcher explains:

Aristotle [...] was the first who attempted to separate the theory of
aesthetics from that of morals. He maintains consistently that the
end of poetry is a refined pleasure. In doing so he severs himself
decisively from the older and more purely didactic tendency of
Greece. [...] he never allows the moral purpose of the poet or the
moral effects of his art to take the place of the artistic end. If the
poet fails to produce the proper pleasure, he fails in the specific
function of his art. He may be good as a teacher, but as a poet or
artist he is bad.1
(1951, 238)

As was shown in the discussion of the category of catharsis, however,

this has not prevented later thinkers from interpreting Aristotelian
thinking on poetry in epistemological terms, as an argument for the
formative and educational function of tragedy and poetry in general.
This development rested on a crucial passage in Chapter IX of the
Poetics, which has been interpreted as offering ‘an explicit statement
that the nature of the learning process involved in poetry is that of see-
ing the relationship between the individual act and the universal law it
illustrates. It is clearly indicated that the aim of poetry is to express
what is universal in the form of particular or ‘historical’ events’ (Golden
1962, 54). In Aristotle’s own words:

the function of the poet [is not] to relate what has happened, but
what may happen, what is possible according to the law of probabil-
ity or necessity. [...] Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a
higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal,
history the particular. By the universal I mean how a person of a
certain type will on occasion speak or act, according to the law of
probability or necessity [...].
(Butcher’s translation, in Butcher 1951, 35)

It was particularly the Italian writers of the Renaissance that combined

elements of Aristotelian thought with snippets of Horace’s theory of
poetry and moulded them into a whole new claim for the effects of the
arts on people: that of the formative function of the artistic experience.
As M. H. Abrams (1953, 15) argues in his influential The Mirror and the
Lamp: Romantic theory and the critical tradition: ‘A history of criticism
 Education and Self-Development 109

could be written solely on the basis of successive interpretations of sali-

ent passages of Aristotle’s Poetics’. In particular, commenting on Sir
Philip Sidney’s (1554–1586) appeal, in his A Defence of Poetry (1595), to
Aristotle’s authority as a source for the claim of the educative role of
poetry, Abrams (Ibid.) remarks: ‘In this instance, with no sense of strain,
Sidney follows his Italian guides (who in turn had read Aristotle through
the spectacles of Horace, Cicero and the Church fathers) in bending one
after another of the key statements of the Poetics to fit his own theoreti-
cal frame.’

The influence of Horace

Before we look in more details at such arguments and their genesis, we

must look at the long-lasting influence of the Latin poet Horace
(65–8 BC) and his Ars Poetica on the development of ideas of the educa-
tional potential of poetry. At the time when Horace wrote his epistle on
poetry, the debate over whether the true function of poetry was mere
pleasure or moral instruction was already a lively one. Two generations
before him, Cicero (104–43 BC) had already taken position in the
defence speech delivered at the trial of the poet Archia, where he had
not only openly admitted to indulging in poetry, but also argued that
this provided him with inspiration for his work as an orator:2

How do you imagine I could find material for my daily speeches on

so many different subjects if I did not train my mind with literary
study, and how could my mind cope with so much strain if I did not
use such study to help it unwind? Yes, I for one am not ashamed to
admit that I am devoted to the study of literature.
(Cicero 2000 edn, 114)

Not only, Cicero argues, is poetry nothing to be ashamed about, it is, as

a matter of fact, a highly formative endeavour:

[...] I also firmly maintain this, that when a natural disposition which
is noble and elevated is given in addition a systematic training in
cultural knowledge, then something remarkable and unique comes
about.
(2000 edn, 115)

Cicero also demonstrates awareness of arguments postulating that

pleasure is the ultimate aim of poetry. Nevertheless, he posits, the
110 The Social Impact of the Arts

pleasure that poetry gives is of a particular kind, able to widen the

reader’s mental horizon:

But suppose one could not point to this great benefit [attaining and
practising excellence], suppose that the study of literature conferred
only enjoyment: even then, I believe, you would agree that this form
of mental relaxation broadens and enlightens the mind like no other.
For other forms of mental relaxation are in no way suited to every
time, age and place. But the study of literature sharpens youth and
delights old age; it enhances prosperity and provides a refuge and
comfort in adversity; it gives enjoyment at home without being a
hindrance in the wider world; at night, and when travelling, and on
country visits, it is an unfailing companion.
(2000 edn, 115–16)

Similarly, Strabo (c. 63–4 BC –AD 24), a contemporary of Horace, argued,

in his treatise Geography, that poetry is ‘a kind of elemental philosophy,
which introduces us early to life, and gives us pleasurable instruction in
reference to character, emotion, action’ (in Spingarn 1908, 24). Horace’s
distinctive contribution to this debate marks a refusal to choose between
pleasure and instruction as the prime functions of poetry by claiming
them both, and together, as the ultimate aim of poetry. Horace explores
these issues in one of his epistles, the Epistula ad Pisones, commonly
referred to as Ars Poetica, composed sometime between 12 and 8 BC. In
the second half of the epistle, Horace makes his famous statement:

Aut prodesse volunt aut delectare poetae

aut simul et iucunda et idonea dicere vitae
(333–4)

Blakeney (1928, 54) translates the verses thus: ‘The poet’s aim is either
to profit or to please, or to blend in one the delightful and the useful’.3
Horace adds, shortly afterwards:

Omne tulit punctum qui miscit utile dulci,

lectorem delectando pariterque monendo.
hic meret aera liber Sosiis; hic et mare transit
et longum noto scriptori progat aevum.

‘The man who mingles the useful with the sweet carries the day by
charming his reader and at the same time instructing him. That’s the
 Education and Self-Development 111

book to enrich the publisher, to be posted overseas, and to prolong the

author’s fame’ (ibid.).4
Towards the end of the epistle, Horace redresses the balance following
an emphasis on the pleasure-giving properties of poetry, and makes
another argument that will be endlessly echoed and developed by
Renaissance humanists concerning the civilising powers of poetry:

This was the poets’ wisdom of old – to draw a line between the Man
and the State, the sacred and the common; to build cities, to check
promiscuous lust, to assign rights to the married, to engrave laws on
wood. Thus did praise and honour come to divine poets and
their laws.5
(Blakeney 1928, 56)

Horace here prefigures the view that ‘poets are the unacknowledged
legislators of the world’ put forward by Shelley in his A Defence of
Poetry (1821), which is at the heart of the next category of impacts we
will consider, that of the civilising powers of the arts. For the moment,
however, we will turn to the consideration of how Renaissance critics,
especially in Italy, blended together Aristotelian and Horatian elements
and created their own version of the argument that the arts, and poetry
in particular, can instruct and edify.

Renaissance elaborations

One of the main aims of the Italian writers of the Renaissance was to
salvage the arts (poetry and the theatre in particular) from the hostility
that, as we have seen, was to be found in the writings and the orations
of the fathers of the Church and in Plato’s Republic.6 The need was evi-
dent, then, to address the psychological and cognitive shortcomings of
poetry first identified by Plato and subsequently developed by the
Christian writers. In particular, because of its pagan nature, the case of
the poetry produced in pre-Christian times posed particular problems
to the religiously sensitive Renaissance writers.7 The medieval Church
had indeed always looked at pagan culture with extreme suspicion, and
as we have seen, overt condemnations of poetry, theatre and other cul-
tural forms abound in the writings of early and medieval Christian
writers (Spingarn 1908, 3–4).
The main task ahead of the Renaissance critics thus was to answer
these objections against classical poetry. The answer to the problem was
found in the allegorical method of interpreting literature, whereby the
112 The Social Impact of the Arts

content of pre-Christian literature was interpreted as an allegory of

Christian values and beliefs. This interpretative method was first intro-
duced by Fulgentius (465–527), who, in his Virgiliana Continentia gives
us a typical example of a re-interpretation of Virgil’s Aeneid as a journey
towards the progressive achievement of happiness that makes it com-
patible with the Christian faith. During the Renaissance, this seemed
the only way to circumvent the moral criticism of poetry, by arguing
that moral teachings can be found in all poetry (pagan poetry included)
by seeking the hidden meanings that lie beneath the literal expression.
Hence, for Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca and their contemporaries, the
function of the poet is to hide his moral instruction behind a veil of
beautiful inventions, or, to borrow, Petrarca’s phrasing, ‘veritatem
rerum pulchris velaminibus adornare’ (to adorn the true nature of
things with beautiful veils).
This strategy, nevertheless, was not without drawbacks, for – as
Spingarn (1908, 8) – notes, the method of allegorical interpretation
‘while perhaps justifying poetry from the standpoint of ethics and
divinity, gives it no place as an independent art; thus considered, poetry
becomes merely a popularized form of theology’.
The allegorical mode of understanding poetry and its power to edu-
cate and provide moral instruction proved nevertheless popular with
Renaissance critics. So, Leonardo Bruni (1374–1444) in his De Studiis et
Litteris (c.1405), after discussing the allegorical interpretation of the
pagan myths, concludes:

Hence I hold my conviction to be securely based; namely, that Poetry

has, by our very constitution, a stronger attraction for us than any
other form of expression, and that anyone ignorant of, and indiffer-
ent to, so valuable an aid to knowledge and so ennobling a source of
pleasure can by no means be entitled to be called educated.
(Woodward 1963 [1897], 131)

Another interesting suggestion on how to reconcile a belief in the

educational role of poetry with a love for the authors of classical antiq-
uity is proffered by Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (1405–1464), who, in his
treatise De Liberorum Educationes (1450) rephrases the old dilemma of
whether pagan literature ought to be condemned:

The crucial question is: how do you use your authors? [...] we leave on
one side their beliefs and superstitions, their false ideas of happiness,
their defective standard of morals; we welcome all that they can
 Education and Self-Development 113

render in praise of integrity and in condemnation of vice. [...] Thus

morals and learning are alike forwarded by the judicious use of
Literature in education.
(Woodward 1963 [1897], 150)

A Horatian inspiration is evident in the work of the Cinquecento the-

orist Antonio Minturno (c. 1500–1574), who – in his De Poeta (1559) –
builds his defence of poetry on the basis of ammunition provided by
the Latin poet. Minturno argues that poetry, whose nature is such that
it can embrace all topics, can be said to comprehend all possible forms
of human knowledge. Indeed, no other form of learning can be found
before the first poets, and no nation – no matter how primitive – has
ever been completely deprived of or opposed to poetry. According to
Minturno, verse, whilst not essential to poetry, makes it more delight-
ful, and thus more successful a tool of instruction (Spingarn 1908, 21).
In his Poetica (1536), Bernardino Daniello (c.1500–1565) puts forwards
a number of arguments that also appear in Sir Philip Sidney’s A Defence
of Poetry (1595). Closely following Horace, Daniello maintains that the
poets were the inventors of the arts of life, and better teachers than
the philosophers. Because of their power to delight, poets teach more
pleasantly (and thus effectively) than any philosopher ever could
(ibid., 20). A generation later, Sidney echoes Daniello’s as well as
Horace’s claims:

This did so notably show itself, that the philosophers of Greece durst
not a long time appear to the world but under the masks of poets. So
Thales, Empedocles, and Parmenides sang their natural philosophy
in verses; so did Pythagoras and Phocylides their moral counsels; so
did Tyrtaeus in war matters, and Solon in matters of policy: or rather
they, being poets, did exercise their delightful vein in those points of
highest knowledge, which before them lay hid to the world.
(1966 edn, 19)

The writings of the humanists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries

are indeed an inexhaustible source of similar arguments in favour of
the instructive function of poetry and, therefore, the central role it
should have in the educational process. It is precisely to them that we
owe the very notion of studia humanitatis after all, and this is but a
small token of their long-lasting influence over the later understanding
of the formative and educational powers of the arts and literature. The
idea that the arts and literature are a means to educate and instruct
114 The Social Impact of the Arts

through pleasure and enjoyment outlived the sixteenth century, to

become a central notion in thinking and writing about the arts, and
literature in particular. In later centuries, the novel especially came to
be seen as the primary repository for the Horatian idea of delightful
instruction through the aesthetic experience. For instance, writing
about the rise of the novel in America, and quoting Royall Tyler, an
American novelist active in the second half of the eighteenth century,
Cathy N. Davidson observes:

increasingly by the end of the eighteenth century, the dichotomy

between amusement and instruction was being erased – largely
through the instrument of the novel – so that the public craved books
designed to ‘amuse while [they] instruct’, in Royall Tyler’s phrase. 8
(2004, 142)

Nevertheless, even after this period, many thinkers felt the need to
defend the arts from persisting hostility and the belief that artistic
engagement could, at best, provide amusement and pleasure, but not a
source of enlightenment. At the turn of the fourteenth century, one the
foremost representatives of German Idealism,9 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel (1770–1831), felt the need to dedicate the beginning of his
Aesthetics (1835) to the rejection of what he saw as still popular objec-
tions moved against the ‘seriousness’ of arts, and against the idea that
the arts represent a legitimate area of rigorous philosphic and scentific
enquiry. This is Hegel’s refutation in the philosopher’s own words:

As regards the worthiness of art to be treated scientifically, it is of

course the case that art can be used as a fleeting play, affording, rec-
reation and entertainment, decorating our surroundings, giving
pleasantess to the externals of our life, and making other objects
stand out by artistic adornment. Thus regarded, art is indeed not
independent, not free, but ancillary. But what we want to consider is
art which is free alike in its ends and its means. The fact that art in
general can serve other ends and be in that case a mere passing
amusement is something which it shares equally with thought.
(1975 edn, 7; emphasis in the original)

Hegel’s rejection of the enslavement of art to religious or moralistic ends

and the declaration of art’s freedom should not, however, be interpreted
as a a rejection of the connection between the artistic and the moral. On
the contrary, it is precisely through the rejection of the arts’ submission
 Education and Self-Development 115

to other causes that the arts can properly fulfil their potential. For
Hegel, indeed, art represents the first step of the process through which
the spirit10 acquires awareness of itself and enables it to grasp in an
immediate and intuitive manner what idealist philosophy theorised
conceptually, thus mediating between the world of reality and concep-
tual thought (Abbagnano and Fornero 1986, vol. 3, 141). As Hegel
explains:

Now, in this freedom alone is fine art truly art, and it only fulfils its
supreme task when it has placed itself in the same sphere as religion
and philosophy, and when it is simply one way of bringing to our
minds and expressing the Divine, the deepest interests of mankind,
and the most comprehensive truths of the spirit. In works of art the
nations have deposited their richest inner intuitions and ideas, and
art is often the key, and in many nations the sole key, to understand-
ing their philosphy and religion. Art shares this vocation with reli-
gion and philosophy, but in a special way, namely by displaying even
the highest [reality] sensuously, bringing it thereby nearer to the
senses, to feeling, and to nature’s mode of appearance. What is thus
displayed is the depth of a supra-sensuous world which thought
peirces and sets up at first as a beyond in contrast with immediate
consciousness and present feeling; it is the freedom of intellectual
reflection which rescues itself from the here and now, called sensu-
ous reality and finitude. But this breach, to which the spirit pro-
ceeds, it is also able to heal. It generates out of itself works of fine art
as the first reconciling middle term between pure thought and what
is merely external, sensuous, and transient, between nature and
finite reality and the infinite freedom of conceptual thinking.
(1975 edn, 7–8; emphasis in the original)

Around the same time when Hegel was developing his influential
version of idealism, another philosophical movement was developing
in Germany, which centred around the notion of the formative role of
the arts, and their contribution to the process of self-development and
refinement referred to as Bildung. It is to this body of thinking that the
second half of this chapter is devoted.

Bildung

Another important strand of thinking that focuses on the educational

role of the arts and humanistic culture is represented by theories of
116 The Social Impact of the Arts

Bildung. These, first developed in the German context, have also proved
to be extremely influential over thinking about the relationship
between the arts and the educational sphere. Scholars agree on the
difficulty of doing justice, in an English translation, to the semantic
complexity of the word Bildung. Swales suggests that:

The word Bildung implies the generality of a culture, the clustering of

values by which a man lives, rather than a specifically educational
attainment. [...] Bildung becomes, then, a total growth process, a dif-
fused Werden, or becoming, involving something more intangible
than the acquirement of a finite number of lessons.
(1978, 14; emphasis in the original)

In order to better understand this ‘total growth process’, and the think-
ing behind this notion of ‘the self-realization of the individual in his
wholeness’ (ibid.), we need to look at the evolution of the concept over
time. According to Susanne Hermeling’s (2003) historical reconstruc-
tion of the notion of Bildung, its theoretical elaboration took place in
Germany between 1790 and 1830. In these crucial years, the theorisers
of Bildung – Herder, Humboldt – and the poets of the Bildungsidee –
Goethe and Schiller – worked to put together one of the most influen-
tial understandings of education ever. Hermeling (ibid.) traces the
pre-history of the concept back to the religious writers of the Middle
Ages, and particularly to the writings of the thirteenth-century mys-
tics. She traces the progressive elaboration of the idea of the process of
self-improvement by which the faithful attempts to mould his/her
soul in the shape of God. Mystic thought was eventually judged to be
heretical and thus banned and repressed throughout the sixteenth
century. However, by then, several of the themes developed by the
mystic writers had seeped through the general consciousness, and kept
feeding thinking on self-improvement and moral self-development.11
The Pietists writers were especially influential in promoting an idea
of Bildung as God’s active transformation of the passive Christian
faithful.
Hermeling (ibid., 169) singles out, amongst others, Johann Arndt
(1555–1621), whose teachings were centred upon a precept he found in
St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, that read ‘And be renewed in the spirit
of your mind’. In Arndt’s view, the idea of transformation is indissoluble
from the notion of self-improvement. As Hermeling (ibid.) explains,
‘Arndt’s idea of shaping the powers of the mind and the heart to God’s
likeness leads up to the eighteenth-century mode of expression’. It is
indeed around the eighteenth century, that the word bilden (‘to mould’
 Education and Self-Development 117

and hence, in its broader sense ‘to educate’) became associated to both
a religious and an aesthetic context (ibid., 171). Progressively, however,
and in parallel with the gradual trend towards secularisation, the reli-
gious meaning of Bildung, whilst not abandoned altogether, came to be
interpreted as an inward process. As Kontjie explains:

This concept of Bildung changes significantly in the course of the

eighteenth century. Instead of being passive recipients of a pre-
existent form individuals now gradually develop their own innate
potential through interaction with their environment. Organic
imagery of natural growth replaces a model of divine intervention.
Transformation into the perfect unity of God turns into the develop-
ment of one’s unique self.
(1993, 2)

This shift in the understanding of Bildung was due to the central

influence of the Enlightenment sensibility over the European middle
classes that, in the eighteenth century, attempted to replace traditional
notions of an aristocracy of blood and birth right with an aristocracy of
the spirit. A central element in this shift from a ‘nobility of birth’ to a
‘nobility of merits’ is the role of education, which assumed, particularly
in Germany, a crucial importance:

In comparison with France and England the middle class in

eighteenth-century Germany was underdeveloped and its political
influence insignificant. It is one reason why the German thinkers
emphasised the value of education for the individual, of Bildung as a
cause in itself, instead of the social and political ends of education:
this being the most conspicuous and most criticised characteristic of
the Bildungsidee.
(Hermeling 2003, 175)

Equally central was the influence of the speculative theory of Gottfried

Leibniz (1646–1716) and of German Idealism (in particular Hegel’s elab-
oration of a dialectical progressive movement towards ‘absolute knowl-
edge’) on the main thinkers of Bildung, Johann Gottfried Herder
(1744–1803) and Alexander von Humboldt (1767–1835).
The spirit of Bildung is clearly expressed by Humboldt in this passage
from his The Limits of State Action (1810):

The true end of man, not that which his transient wishes suggest to
him, but that which eternal immutable reason prescribes, is the
118 The Social Impact of the Arts

highest possible development of his powers into a well-proportioned

whole. For culture of this kind freedom is the first and indispensable
condition.
(in Bruford 1975, 16)

For Humboldt, it should not be the aim of the state to provide happiness,
but freedom for the individual. The highest aim for man is to strive for
Bildung, and freedom is a prerequisite for the quest for self-education and
amelioration. The state should therefore take it upon itself to guarantee
individual freedom, thus aiding the individual’s Bildung, rather than set-
ting up a national educational system (Gonon 1995).
The notion that an important component of Bildung is self-develop-
ment, or Selbstbildung, is central in Humboldt’s writing. Humboldt is
quite clear that a genuine process of Bildung has nothing to do with the
kind of education that aims at preparing one for a profession, or for civic
life, or even for a life devoted to God. In fact, self-development is the one
true aim of the educative process. Needless to say, the ideal of Selbstbildung,
whilst in theory open to all human beings, is – in fact – an intrinsically
elitist notion, based as it is on the assumption of the possibility of devot-
ing time to self-development and self-perfection (this, in practice, pre-
supposes, as a prerequisite, the luxury of leisure so as to devote oneself
to learned otium and self-development) (Hermeling 2003).
The idea of Bildung as process, central in the German debates over the
Bildungsidee, is clearly exemplified in the Bildungsroman, which unsur-
prisingly predominates in the novelistic production in Germany in the
time-span here considered. This is a type of novel that centres around a
central character, and charts his/her development and learning process
up to a stage where a certain degree of Selbstbildung is achieved. The
most influential examples of Bildungsroman have been written by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), who also wrote the already
mentioned The Sorrows of Young Werther, and William Meisters Lehrjahre
(‘William Meisters’ Apprenticeship’), two classic titles in the genre. As
the nineteenth-century academic Karl Mongenstern (who is credited
with using the term Bildungsroman for the first time in 1803) explains,
these novels not only charted the personal journey of self-education
and formation of the protagonist, but also helped the readers in their
own process of self-perfection:

We say that we may call it the Bildungsroman, first and primarily, on

account of its content, because it represents the Bildung of the hero in
its beginning and progress to a certain stage of completion; but also
 Education and Self-Development 119

second, because just this depiction promotes the Bildung of the reader
more than any other sort of novel.
(in Kontjie 1993, 16)

Furthermore, as this passage from Goethe’s autobiography Aus Meinem

Leben: Dicthung und Warheit (‘From My Life: Poetry and Truth’) shows,
the writer’s work is also part of this process of self-perfection and educa-
tion. Speaking of his early youth, Goethe explains:

And thus began that bend of mind from which I could not deviate
my whole life through: namely, that of turning into an image, into a
poem, everything that delighted or troubled me, or otherwise occu-
pied my attention, and of coming to some certain understanding of
myself thereupon, as well to rectify my conceptions of external
things, as to set my mind at rest about them. The faculty of doing
this was necessary to no one more than to me, for my natural dispo-
sition whirled me constantly from one extreme to the other. All the
works therefore that have been published by me are only fragments
of one great confession.
(cited and translated by Cassirer 1979, 210)

It would be misleading, however, to see the process of Bildung and its

component of Selbstbildung as a completely inward-looking mechanism;
on the contrary, the process of self-education is seen as an integral part
of the individual’s contribution to the enrichment and maintenance of
his or her civilisation. As Herder explains, Bildung is an ‘interactive
social process in which men influence each other within a specific
social setting and in which they both receive from and add to their
distinctive historical and communal heritage’ (in Barnard 1969, 12).12
Indeed, the relationship between culture and language, the individual
and the nation is an important theme recurring in the theorists of
Bildung (Hermeling 2003, 174).
The role that the arts have in the process of Bildung was explored by
Freidrich Schiller (1759–1805) in his collection of letters On the Aesthetic
Education of Man (1795). Here, by the term ‘education’, Schiller refers
precisely to the process of self-education of the individual discussed so
far. He argues that, in the work of art, the two normally opposed pow-
ers of reason and sensuality (which Schiller refers to as the ‘sensuous’
and ‘formal’ drives) are reconciled and harmonised within the indi-
vidual. Whereas the imperfect individual is dominated by either rea-
son or nature, the aesthetic state – or ‘play’ drive – makes possible the
120 The Social Impact of the Arts

achievement of a more desirable equilibrium. So, although Schiller

does not envisage for art a specific didactic function, he nevertheless
argues that artistic experiences widen the individual’s intellectual
horizon, so that art is ultimately a perfect vehicle for Bildung (Hermeling
2003, 175). His main contribution to the Bildungidee, then, consists in
helping to establish the concept of beauty and its appreciation as a
fundamental step in the Bildung process of both individuals and com-
munities (Hohr 2002, 61).

Modern elaborations

In modern times the question of the educational and formative value of

art and culture was developed by a number of thinkers. Antonio Gramsci
(1891–1937), in his Prison Notebooks,13 writes that culture ‘is organiza-
tion, discipline of one’s inner self, a coming to terms with one’s own
personality; it is the attainment of a higher awareness, with the aid of
which one succeeds in understanding one’s own historical value, one’s
own function in life, one’s own rights and obligations’ (in Forgacs 1988,
57). Ernst Cassirer later took up this question in one of his Yale lectures,
delivered probably in 1942. Here Cassirer reviews the classic philosoph-
ical denials of the cognitive and educational function of art, and puts
forward his own interesting argument in favour of the educational pow-
ers of the arts, which is worth quoting at length:

Imitation of nature and expression of feelings are the two basic ele-
ments of art. They are, as it were, the stuff of which the garment of art
is woven. But they do not express art’s fundamental character, they do
not exhaust its meaning and value. If art were nothing else than a
mere copy of nature or a mere reproduction of human life, its intrinsic
worth and its function in human culture would be rather doubtful
and questionable. But it is much more. It adds, so to speak, a new
dimension to human life; it gives it a depth that we do not reach in our
common apprehension of things. Art is not a mere repetition of nature
and life; it is a sort of transformation and transubstantiation. This
transubstantiaton is brought about by the power of aesthetic form.
Aesthetic form is not simply given; it is not a datum of our immediate
empirical world. In order to become aware of it, we have to produce it;
and this production depends on a specific autonomous act of the
human mind. We cannot speak of aesthetic form as part or element of
nature; it is a product of a free activity. It is for this reason that in the
realm of art even all our common feelings, our passions and emotions,
 Education and Self-Development 121

undergo a fundamental change. Passivity itself is turned into activity;

mere receptivity is changed into spontaneity. What we feel here is not
a single or simple emotional state. It is rather the whole gamut of
human life, the continuous oscillation between all its extremes –
between joy and grief, hope and fear, exultation and despair.
(1979, 211–12)

The themes of the process of transformation and transubstantiation of

feelings through art, and the view of art as the dynamic process of life
itself are central to Cassirer’s understanding of how art can have an edu-
cational role in man’s life. As he concludes at the end of the lecture:

It is this character of aesthetic experience which to my mind gives to

art its special place in human culture and makes it an essential and
indispensable element in the system of liberal education. Art is a way
to freedom, the process of the liberation of the human mind which
is the real and ultimate aim of all education; it has to fulfil a task of
its own, a task that cannot be replaced by any other function.
(1979, 215)

Closely related to this view of the educational function of art, are the
cognitivist theories of art, which were indirectly observed earlier. The
central tenets of a cognitivist view of art have been succinctly summa-
rised by Cynthia Freeland:

(1) Artworks stimulate cognitive activity that might teach us about

the world. [...] (2) The cognitive activity they simulate is part and par-
cel of their functioning as artworks. (3) as a result of this stimulation,
we learn from artworks: we acquire fresh knowledge, our beliefs are
refined, and our understanding is deepened. (4) What we learn in
this manner constitutes one of the main reasons we enjoy and value
artworks in the first place.’
(quoted in John 2001, 331)

The influence of notions of Bildung as well as the tension between

prodesse and delectare as functions of art can be found in the thinking of
Herbert Read (1893–1968). In his To Hell with Culture, fist published in
1963, he argues:

[...] cultivation is the distinctive power of man, the power that has
enabled him to progress from the animal and the savage state. In his
122 The Social Impact of the Arts

progress man has cultivated, not only animals and plants, but also
his own kind. Education is nothing other than self-cultivation, and
cultivation, when man directs it to his own species, naturally includes
the cultivation of those senses and faculties by means of which man
gives form and shape to the things he makes.
(2002a edn, 31)

Art, for Read, has a central role to play in this process of self-cultivation,
and hence is called for a higher mission than simple entertainment:

Art is not necessarily a moral activity, and its tonic effect is made
through the senses. Nevertheless, even in its purest, or most
abstract – in Oscar Wilde’s sense, its most useless forms: in one of
Shakespeare’s songs, or a minuet by Mozart, or a drawing by
Boucher – even then art is radically different from amusement. It
does not leave us without affecting us, and affecting us, according
to some scale of value, for the better. [...] works of art speak more
directly to us: for by their form and style they give us a measure of
the refinement of a civilization.
(2002b edn, 171)

Stephen Spender (1961, 223) echoes similar arguments when he points

out that ‘art is a central medium for the realization of man’s search for
significance in life’. Indeed, as much of the present discussion has
shown, in many of the philosophers and scholars whose work we have
looked at, the formative and educational value of arts has not just a
cognitive dimension, but an ethical one too.

* * *

In conclusion, this chapter has focused on writings that ascribe an

intrinsic educative function to the arts. The origin of such a position
has been identified in Aristotle’s attempt to salvage poetry from the
Platonic attack and in his notion of dramatic catharsis. The later evolu-
tion of the original Aristotelian position was also examined, and two
particularly significant moments in the evolution of this claim were
identified in the writings of the Latin poet Horace, and his suggestion
that the true aim of poetry is to instruct while it delights, and the sub-
sequent elaborations of this idea by the Italian Humanists of the
Renaissance. The last section of the chapter looked at how such ideas
 Education and Self-Development 123

coalesced, in the eighteenth century, around the notion of Bildung, and

later elaborations of the claim for the educational and formative powers
of the arts. The moral dimension of the Bildung function of art, which,
as we have seen was hinted at by the writers considered in this section,
becomes more explicit in the claims made for the civilising power of
art. These will be examined in the next chapter.
6
Moral Improvement and
Civilisation

In the present category we have grouped together the claims made for
the civilising and moralising effects of the arts. The notion of the
‘civilising mission’ of the arts is here intended in its broader sense, so
that within this category we will consider the moral implications of the
already discussed defence of poetry and art from the Platonic and
Christian prejudices, as well as specific claims that the arts are an instru-
ment of moral improvement and civilisation.

Aristotle and Horace

We have seen how Aristotle attempted, in his writings on dramatic

poetry, to counteract the Platonic censure of poetry by providing an
alternative understanding of the nature of the pleasure derived from
the enjoyment of poetry and theatre. However, as confirmed by the
popularity of the moral interpretation of his notion of catharsis, his
endeavour to defend poetry from Plato’s criticism had clear moral
undertones. It was observed earlier how, for Aristotle, poetry does not
have a patently moral or didactic aim. Nevertheless, as Spingarn points
out, in Aristotle’s Poetics:

poetry is justified on the grounds of morality, for while not having a

distinctly moral aim, it is essentially moral, because it is [an] ideal
representation of life, and an idealised version of human life must
necessarily present it in its moral aspects. Aristotle distinctly com-
bats the traditional Greek conception of the didactic function of
poetry, but it is evident that he insists fundamentally that literature
must be moral, for he sternly rebukes Euripides several times on
grounds that are moral, rather than purely aesthetic.
(1908, 18–19)
124
 Moral Improvement and Civilisation 125

Horace too, should be mentioned again here, for we have seen how,
by regarding early poets as sages and prophets, and the inventors of arts
and sciences, Horace is effectively pointing out the civilising function
of poets and poetry.

Renaissance humanists
Equally, we have noted before how the arguments in defence of poetry
elaborated during the Middle Ages and subsequently elaborated by the
Italian Renaissance writers, based as they were on the allegorical inter-
pretation of poetry, also had clear ethical undertones. Whilst the
effort to rebuke the Platonic and Christian denigration of poetry and
theatre centred on a fusion of Aristotelian and Horatian themes, which
aimed to demonstrate the educational power of poetry, the type of
instruction thus gained was of a strong moral nature (as is to be
expected from writers living in a period suffused with a far-reaching
and deep-rooted religiosity). Central to the allegorical interpretation
of poetry was the notion that moral teachings ought to be sought in
the hidden meanings that could be discovered beyond the literal
expression of poetic texts, both ancient and modern. Hence, Leonardo
Bruni’s already mentioned definition of poetry as ‘so valuable an aid
to knowledge and so ennobling a source of pleasure’, a recurring
theme in Italian Renaissance literary criticism (in Woodward 1963
[1897], 131).
Indeed, the influence of the Renaissance Humanists’ ideal of self-
cultivation – and the centrality of the artistic experience within it –
resulted in such works as the Libro del Cortegiano (‘The Book of the
Courtier’), published in 1528 by Baldassar Castiglione (1478–1529) – a
treatise dealing with issues of etiquette, social problems, and the intel-
lectual accomplishments of the perfect courtesan. The Cortegiano,
turned out to be one of the great books of its time, widely translated
throughout Europe, and the first step towards the elaboration, through
a literary work, of the ‘ennobling ideal’ of the court and the courtesan
(Petronio 1991, 213). The enjoyment of refined activities, such as poetry
reading, was always an important element of what Giuseppe Petronio
(ibid., 215) defined as the ‘aristocratic ethics’ of courtesan life that
Baldassar Castiglione contributed to moulding. Juan del Boscán (c.1490–
1542) and Garcilaso de la Vega (1503–1536), who were instrumental in
the diffusion of the Cortegiano in Spain, used it as the foundation for
their own humanistic programme (in which poetry played a central
role): ‘a holistic way to individual perfection via submission to a com-
plexly articulated code of conduct’ (McCaw 2001, 264).
126 The Social Impact of the Arts

The moral undertones of the civilising function thus attributed to

artistic endeavours and pastimes become even more explicit in the
writing of Michel de l’Hospital (1506–1573) – the French jurist, human-
ist, and influential protector of many a poet – who was a strenuous
advocate of the civilising powers of letters and culture. As Petris (2003,
691) explains, for de l’Hospital, the spirit of the Renaissance was
embodied in the hope ‘that the humaniores litterae can help man fulfil
the best part of his nature, his humanitas, which is not a given, but a
potentiality to be developed. For Michel de L’Hospital only the self-
knowledge bred by letters can prevent man from becoming the slave of
his passions’.
If we move from the defence of poetry to the defence of theatre, we
notice that, in England, moral arguments for the defence of theatre
were put forward by a number of writers in the attempt to counteract
what – as was seen earlier – was a ferocious attack on the stage by the
Puritan pamphleteers. So, in his already mentioned A Defence of Poetry
(1595), Sir Philip Sidney endeavours to respond to the rhetorical ques-
tion posed by Stephen Gosson (one of the main personalities involved
in the attack against the stage) in his 1582 polemical essay Plays Confuted
in Five Actions: ‘The best play you can picke out, is but a mixture of good
and evil, how can it be then the schoolemistres of life?’ (Barish 1981,
90). Sidney, who was instrumental in introducing the authors of the
Renaissance to an English readership, and was profoundly influenced
by them, follows their teachings in defending the theatre as moral, true
and useful (Bruch 2004, 17). The original element in his thinking was
to transfer the criticism usually made against the theatre onto history,
lamenting its too confused, contradictory and inconsistent nature.
Rather than in history, then, moral instruction ought to be looked for
in literature and the theatre. Indeed, imaginative literature is able to
create a ‘perfect pattern’ of good and bad, vice and virtue (much neater,
in fact, than that we can witness in everyday life and the historical past)
therefore presenting a more consistent tool for our moral education
(Barish 1981, 90).
Similarly, Thomas Lodge (c.1558–1621) also follows in the wake of the
Renaissance writers in his A Defense of Poetry, Music and Stage Plays
(1579), where – referring back to Boccaccio’s version of the allegorical
interpretation of literature – he outlines the civilising role of theatre in
antiquity and its role as a moral guide for humanity ever since (Bruch
2004). On the one hand, these authors demonstrate the profound influ-
ence of arguments on the moral education that can be gained from
poetry elaborated in sixteenth-century Italy. On the other hand,
 Moral Improvement and Civilisation 127

however, their writings are symptomatic of the rather unoriginal nature

and the somewhat lame and ineffectual tone of contemporary attempts
to defend the theatre – especially if compared with the vehemence of
the opposite side in what came to be known as the ‘stage controversy’
(Barish 1981, 117 ff.).

French Enlightenment

The arguments for the moral and civilising function of arts devel-
oped during the French Enlightenment, on the other hand, are origi-
nal and significant, for they introduce, for the fist time, an explicitly
civic slant to the case made for the civilising powers of the arts. In his
perceptive essay, Saisselin (1970) argues that until the eighteenth cen-
tury, the fine arts were the privilege of the aristocracy and the wealthy,
and the emphasis was on artistic consumption as a way to combat the
inevitable ennui of everyday life. Providing pleasure was thus expected
to be the principle aim of art. However, this view of art as frivo-
lous and decadent divertissement was openly questioned by the
Enlightenment philosophes. The group of writers usually referred to by
this label – Diderot, Marmontel, Alembert, Condillac and Voltaire –
coherently put forward a radically different view and advocated an
art which could forge citizens imbued with moral and civic values
and virtues. In other words, they postulated that art should be used
for the education and moral improvement of mankind (Saisselin
1970, 200). A crucial step in this process was the philosophes’ attribu-
tion of moral value to public utility, and the establishment of a link
between such public utility and the call of the artist. This represents
a point of departure from previous elaborations of the moral func-
tions of poetry, which tended to focus primarily on processes of self-
improvement and self-fashioning.
The intellectual work of the philosophes, then, resulted in a new hier-
archy of cultural production, whereby art and literature that promoted
moral and public utility were perceived as inherently superior to artistic
expressions merely aiming at divertissement. As Saisselin explains:

What they [the philosophes] wanted was great art, to be founded upon
permanent values such as the true, the good, and the beautiful.
Divertissement and agreement were a secondary consideration. The
justification for art was to be founded upon the beau ideal and artists
were exhorted to devote themselves to an art of moral, civic, and
therefore public utility; the artist was no longer merely to please a
128 The Social Impact of the Arts

patron, divert a leisure class, or glorify the great, nor, for that matter,
to emulate the gentleman; he was to be first and foremost a citizen.
(1970, 202)

Saisselin (ibid.) is careful to explain that such developments did not

come out of the blue, but are, rather, correlated to important develop-
ments taking place in society at large around the same time. In particu-
lar, he singles out the importance of the rise of the bourgeoisie and of
the progressive institutionalisation and professionalisation of art,
which, indeed, began in the eighteenth century. By the 1770s, the phi-
losophes had been successful in characterising the forms of art enjoyed
by the nobility as corrupted and decadent, and in forging an alternative
ideal of the cultivated man of distinction, equally distant from the old
aristocracy as from the vulgar populace.
The particular view of the moral and civic function of art introduced
by the writers of the French Enlightenment would become very influ-
ential. That it soon acquired wide acceptance is proved by Antoine
Quatremère de Quincy (1755–1849), who, writing a couple of genera-
tions after the philosophes, and from a very different political stand-
point, nonetheless displays a similar understanding of the civic
function of art.1 The conviction that art should have a social purpose
is at the heart of Quatremère’s thinking. For him, as for the philosophes
before him, art is an object of social and cultural utility that can pro-
vide us with a precious understanding of the origins, the rise and the
decline of past civilizations. Greek art, in particular, fascinated him,
and in his Considérations sur les Arts de Dessein en France (1791), an essay
presenting an ideal programme of art education, he discusses the way
in which, in classical Greece, art became a crucial means for the articu-
lation of the ethical preoccupations of the polis. Greek art, then, con-
tained and transmitted a whole complex of historical, religious,
political, civic and moral values that, together, constituted and pre-
served the Greek social order (Adams 2004). The centrality of the pub-
lic and moral utility of art in Quatremère’s thinking is explicitly
emphasised in this passage from his Considérations Morales sur la
Destination des Ouvrages de l’Art (1815):

My purpose is to show that the moral utility of works of Art, or their

application to a noble, fixed use, is the most important condition
necessary for the artist and the art lover to produce and to judge; for
the public to sense and to taste the beauties of imitation.
(in Wilcox 1953, 366)
 Moral Improvement and Civilisation 129

Kant

If we move from France to Germany, we notice that here too the

eighteenth century represents a moment of theoretical elaborations
that highlight the links between art and morality. Immanuel Kant
(1724–1804), in his Critique of Judgement (1790), made it clear that, when
exposed to a work of art, simply taking pleasure from it is not an ade-
quate response on our part. The pleasure that derives from being
exposed to beauty, for Kant, needs to be ultimately directed towards
morality, since only moral ideas can be contemplated as ends:

Unless we connect the fine arts, closely or remotely, to moral ideas,

which alone carry with them an independent liking, the second of
the two alternatives just mentioned [a displeasure with the object] is
their ultimate fate. They serve in that case only for our diversion,
which we need all the more in proportion as we use it to dispel the
mind’s dissatisfaction with itself, with the result that we increase still
further our uselessness and dissatisfaction with ourselves.
(Kant 1987 edn, 196)

Despite the fact that the moral and aesthetic judgements belong to dif-
ferent categories – on the grounds that the former is based on abstract
concepts and has universal validity, and the latter is non-conceptual
and can thus only aspire to subjective universality – the connection
between the aesthetic and the moral is reiterated throughout the
Critique (Hammermeister 2002, 37). As Scruton (1982, 91) puts it, for
Kant ‘[a]esthetic experience and practical reason are two aspects of the
moral’. In particular, the ethical dimension of the aesthetic sphere and
its powers of moral instruction appear most clear in the famous
Section 59 of the Critique of Judgement, aptly entitled ‘Beauty as the
Symbol of Morality’. Here Kant says:

Now I maintain that the beautiful is the symbol of the morally good;
and only because we refer the beautiful to the morally good (we all do so
naturally and require all others to do so, as a duty) does our liking for
it include a claim to everyone else’s assent, while the mind is also
conscious of being ennobled by this [reference], above a mere recep-
tivity for pleasure derived from sense impressions, and it assesses the
value of other people too on the basis of [their having] a similar
maxim in their power of judgement.
(Kant 1987 edn, 228; emphasis added)
130 The Social Impact of the Arts

Romanticism

It is, however, in the nineteenth century, with the Romantic writers

that the articulation and theorisation of the moral and civilising powers
of art – as well as their civic value – reaches its climax. An exhaustive
discussion of Romantic theories of art is not only, unfortunately, beyond the
scope of this book, but an endeavour inevitably beset with difficulty. Partly,
the reason for this is that Romanticism was a Europe-wide phenomenon,
and although certain of its most characteristic features recur in most
European nations, nevertheless each of them saw the development of a
different version of its aesthetic, linked to the social, political and cultural
conditions prevailing there (Bennett 2006). Furthermore, as Wiedmann
(1986, 1) explains, even within individual nations, ‘Romanticism was not,
nor at any time aspired to be, a coherent and self-consistent movement
based on a programme of thought or system of ideas. Neither in terms of
literature nor art was Romanticism ever a unified style although it did
bring about dramatic and far-reaching formal innovations.’
The analysis that follows, then, offers but a few representative exam-
ples of Romantic theories that are most relevant to the present discus-
sion. In particular, our examination aims to highlight how Romantic
aesthetic theories, especially as developed in early nineteenth-century
England, could ultimately be seen as the most powerful theoretical
re-elaboration of the Horatian double functions of poetry and art –
prodesse et delectare – in modern times. The pleasure that contact with
the arts gives men is indeed an important feature of Romantic think-
ing, as this passage from William Wordsworth’s (1770–1850) Preface to
the Lyrical Ballads (1800) shows:

The Poet writes under one restriction only, namely the necessity of
giving immediate pleasure to a human Being possessed of that infor-
mation that might be expected from him, not as a lawyer, a physician,
a mariner, an astronomer, or a natural philosopher, but as a Man.
(Wordsworth 1936 edn, 737)

In other words, the aim of the poet is to provide pleasure to an educated

public. Wordsworth’s writing is indeed peppered with references to
pleasure, which he considered as essential to poetry and poets, often
expressing doubts over his own capability of giving pleasure to others
through his work (Kermode 2004, 22).
Wordsworth, however, was also very careful in specifying the extraor-
dinary nature of the pleasure deriving from poetry, in order to ensure
that it should not be confused with the baser and less noble pleasures
 Moral Improvement and Civilisation 131

and occupations that Wordsworth saw as gaining popularity in his

times. In a view that will become almost canonical in Romantic theories
of art, then, poetry becomes an antidote to the malaise and corruption
of present time’s society:

For the human mind is capable of being excited without the applica-
tion of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint
perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this, and
who does not further know, that one being is elevated above another,
in proportion as he possesses this capability. It has therefore appeared
to me, that to endeavour to produce or enlarge this capability is one
of the best services in which, at any period, a Writer can be engaged;
but this service, excellent at all times, is especially so at the present
day. For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now
acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of
the mind, and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to
a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are
the great national events which are daily taking place, and the
increasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of
their occupations produces a craving for extraordinary incident,
which the rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies.
(Wordsworth 1936 edn, 735)

This brief passage from the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads effectively sum-
marises many of the concerns of the English poets and writers of this
period. As industrialisation and increasingly specialised modes of
production were slowly but steadily changing the world in dramatic
ways – cities were growing fast, and the market provided a never-ending
supply of ‘extraordinary incidents’ and ‘gross and violent stimulants’ –
mental degeneration seemed almost inevitable. The antidote to such
developments was poetry, which, in this view, assumes a crucial role in
the regeneration of society (the prodesse element in Horace’s dyad). In
the Preface, indeed, Wordsworth explicitly presents his own poems as
his modest attempt to counteract ‘this degrading thirst after outrageous
stimulation’ (ibid.).
A by-product of this view of the regenerative and civilising function
of poetry, is the central and heroic notion of the poet that accompanies
it; Wordsworth defines the poet as:

the rock of defence for human nature; an upholder and preserver, car-
rying everywhere with him relationship and love. In spite of difference
of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs: in
132 The Social Impact of the Arts

spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things violently destroyed;
the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of
human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time.
(1936 edn, 737 and 738)

If we look at another great Romantic poet and theorist, Percy Bhysse

Shelley (1792–1822), we can see similar points being articulated, on
both the nature of the poet and his role in society. In particular, the
guiding role of the poet finds in Shelley an explicit definition. In his A
Defence of Poetry (1819), Shelley writes:

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mir-

rors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present;
the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets
which sing to battle and feel not what they inspire; the influence
which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legis-
lators of the world.2
(1954 edn, 297)

Furthermore, the identification of the main functions of poetry with the

provision of pleasure as well as a civilising force in a time of moral deca-
dence is also a theme that we find developed in Shelley’s Defence, where
the ethical nature of the effects of poetry on readers is explicitly stated:

A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehen-

sively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many oth-
ers; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The
great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry
administers to the effect by acting upon the cause. [...] Poetry
strengthens that faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of
man in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb.

And further:

Poetry ever communicates all the pleasures which men are capable of
receiving: is it ever still the light of life; the source of whatever beau-
tiful or generous or true can have place in an evil time. It will readily
be confessed that those among the luxurious citizens of Syracuse
and Alexandria, who were delighted with the poems of Theocritus,
were less cold, cruel, and sensual than the remnant of their tribe.
(1954 edn, 286)
 Moral Improvement and Civilisation 133

What Wordsworth and Shelley put forward in these passages has been
defined by August Wiedmann (1986, 66 ff.) as the ‘hierophantic
conception of art’, whereby the artist and poet appears, indeed, as a
hierophant, that is, a mediator and interpreter of transcendental and
divine truths which he also helps in communicating to his fellow men.
The significance of such a view of poetry and art to the present exami-
nation is clarified in Raymond Williams’s Culture and Society (1958).
Here Williams (1990 edn, 42) explains that, around the time when
Wordsworth and Shelley were writing, artists ‘came to see themselves as
agents of the “revolution for life”, in their capacity as bearers for the
creative imagination. [...] it was on this basis that the association of the
idea of general perfection of humanity with the practice and study of
the arts was to be made’. As Williams further explains, it was precisely
through the work produced by artists and poets that it was possible to
have access to ‘that ideal of human perfection which was to be the cen-
tre of defence against the disintegrating tendencies of the age’ (ibid.).3
This brief review, therefore, makes it possible to conclude that, for
both Wordsworth and Shelley, poetry has a clear ethical and humanis-
ing function. As Bennett (2006, 129) puts it, ‘poetry, by virtue of its
imaginative power, has the capacity to awaken the imaginative poten-
tial of others. Because imagination is at the root of empathy, and because
empathy promotes moral conduct, poetry thus fulfils a vital moral
function’. Furthermore, this view of the poet as interpreter and of
poetry as ‘the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth’ (Shelley
1954 edn, 281), and a civilising force in society – ‘Poetry redeems from
decay the visitations of the divinity in man’ (ibid., 293) – will prove
extremely influential in England, whilst through similar notions elabo-
rated by Weimar theorists (Goethe, Schiller, etc.) these ideas became, in
fact, current throughout Europe.
As a matter of fact, the influence of such ideas was soon felt beyond
the European borders. In the second half of the century, a view of the
civilising powers of literature that is fundamentally consistent with the
one discussed above can be found in the writings of the American poet
Walt Whitman (1819–1892). In his Democratic Vistas (1871), Whitman
proposes a new, powerful version of the medical metaphor first intro-
duced by Aristotle, and writes about the therapeutic and civilising pow-
ers of works of literature. The problem of the civilised world was, in his
view, ‘social and religious, and is to be finally met and treated with lit-
erature’ (quoted in Jensen 2002, 34). Whitman’s claims for the power of
literature, however, go much further than this, for, very few people
actually are fully aware of the portentous ways in which ‘great literature
134 The Social Impact of the Arts

penetrates all, gives hue to all, shapes aggregates and individuals, and
after subtle ways, with irresistible power, constructs, sustains, demolishes
at will’ (ibid.):

A single new thought, imagination, abstract principle, even literary

style, fit for the time, put in shape by some great literatus, and pro-
jected among mankind, may duly cause changes, growth, removals
greater than the longest and bloodiest war, or the most stupendous
merely political, dynastic, or commercial overturn.
(quoted in Jensen 2002, 34–5)

If we come back to Europe, we see that the Romantic writers effec-

tively set out a way of thinking about the arts and their role within
society that was to be followed up by numerous later intellectuals, thus
indirectly affecting cultural policy debates of today. Bennett (2006,
131) suggests that ‘[i]n many respects, post-war cultural policy in Britain
was itself a Romantic project’.4
As Bennett (2006) observes, progressively (and, at least in part, at the
hands of the Romantic writers themselves), theories and ideas that were
initially formulated for poetry alone came to be extended to the arts in
general, thus developing into a general theory of the relationship
between the arts and society. Such ideas evolved further in a number of
different directions as the nineteenth century progressed. For reasons
of space, we will focus on the particular articulation and development
of some fundamental ideas about the nature and function of art by
Matthew Arnold. As was discussed earlier, Arnoldian theories of culture
have to some degree reflected the intellectual and ideological basis of a
liberal-humanist understanding of art and culture. In turn, such
liberal-humanist notions of culture (which, very briefly, identify and
limit Culture with the aesthetic forms that, considered together, make
up the traditional canon of European high culture) have represented
the theoretical and ideological basis for much of postwar cultural policy
in Europe (Jordan and Weedon 1995).

Matthew Arnold

As we have seen, in nineteenth-century England, the world was chang-

ing very fast, and by the second half of the century, both urbanisation
and industrialisation had gained further momentum, bringing with
them social inequalities, overcrowding and disease. Consequently, anx-
ieties about the urban ‘mob’ and the possibility of social unrest were
 Moral Improvement and Civilisation 135

palpable amongst the English middle and upper classes, especially

following the Second Reform Act of 1867, which almost doubled the size
of the English electorate. Whilst in principle not adverse to democracy,
Matthew Arnold was, however, worried by what he saw as the ‘anarchic’
tendencies of present society. This is how O. Bennett explains and sum-
marises the central concerns expressed by Arnold in his most influen-
tial piece of cultural and social criticism, Culture and Anarchy (1869):

[H]e presents us with an England that, far from being in a state of

‘unrivalled happiness’, is in fact not only brutalised and culturally
impoverished but also on the verge of social and spiritual anarchy. In
the face of such conditions, Arnold [...] turns to his notion of culture,
which he offers as an answer to ‘anarchy’ and suggests will be ‘the
great help out of our present difficulties.’ He links culture to the idea
of the state and proposes that a kind of intellectual aristocracy, dis-
tinguished by its attachment to culture, will provide the source of
authority that is so needed in times of anarchy.
(2005, 463–4)

In the Preface to Culture and Anarchy, Matthew Arnold famously

defined his notion of culture, and thus, the solution to society’s
present malaise as:

a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all

the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought
and said in the world; and through this knowledge, turning a stream
of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which
we now follow staunchly but mechanically [...] .
(1993 edn, 190)

The social dimension of such a quest for knowledge and understanding

is made explicit when Arnold (ibid., 62) argues that ‘[p]erfection, as
culture conceives it, is not possible while the individual remains iso-
lated’. The idea of perfection and its link with culture are a central
theme in Arnold’s essay. So, ‘the idea of beauty and of a human nature
perfect on all sides, which is the dominant idea of poetry, is a true and
invaluable idea’ (ibid., 67). It is, furthermore, an idea with obvious eth-
ical undertones:

the idea which culture sets before us of perfection, – an increased

spiritual activity, having for its characters increased sweetness,
136 The Social Impact of the Arts

increased light, increased life, increased sympathy, – is an idea

which the new democracy needs far more than the idea of the
blessedness of the franchise, or the wonderfulness of its own indus-
trial performances.
(1993 edn, 67)

On this basis, Arnold reaches conclusions not too dissimilar from those
articulated, on the opposite shores of the Atlantic, by Walt Whitman:

If we look at the world outside us we find disquieting absence of sure

authority. We discover that only in right reason can we get a source
of sure authority; and culture brings us towards right reason. [...] What
we want is a fuller harmonious development of our humanity, a free
play of thought upon our routine notions, spontaneity of conscious-
ness, sweetness and light; and these are just what culture generates
and fosters.
(1993 edn, 151)

Arguments based on the civilising powers of the arts, and the belief
that they could counteract the ‘anarchic’ tendencies of society and thus
contribute to the maintenance of social order, indeed became central to
parliamentary debates surrounding the first instances of state involve-
ment in cultural matters in England, for example, on the occasion of
the opening of the first art galleries in London.5 In many ways, how-
ever, Arnold was only expressing and articulating in an intellectually
sophisticated manner views of the transformative and civilising poten-
tial of the arts that were, at that time, already widespread and deeply
felt among the English educated classes. This passage from the minutes
of the annual meeting, in 1841, of the Art Union of London, reveals the
opinion of its secretary, George Godwin (1813–1888), whose position is
very close to that of Arnold:

The influence of the fine arts in humanising and refining, in purify-

ing the thoughts and raising the sources of gratification in man, is so
universally felt and admitted that it is hardly necessary now to urge
it. By abstracting him from the gratification of the senses, teaching
him to appreciate physical beauty and to find delight in the contem-
plation of the admirable accordance of nature, the mind is carried
forward to higher aims, and becomes insensibly opened to a convic-
tion of the force of moral worth and the harmony of virtue.
(quoted in King 1964, 107)
 Moral Improvement and Civilisation 137

Similarly, the social reformist William Stanley Jevons (1835–1882), in

his Methods of Social Reform (1883, 7) expresses the same sentiments
when he declares, with typical Victorian assertiveness, that ‘[a]mong
the means towards a higher civilisation, I unhesitatingly assert that the
deliberate cultivation of public amusement is a principal one’. Indeed,
‘popular amusements are no trivial matter, but rather one that has great
influence on national manners and character’ (ibid.). On the basis of
this confident premise, Jevons’s essay goes on to discuss the ways in
which music, public libraries and museums (which, to the Victorian
mind, were all forms of public recreation) could impart their civilising
effects on the English populace. As we have shown in earlier articles,
the idea of a civilising mission for the arts that was developed around
this time is still far from extinct in contemporary arts policy docu-
ments (Bennett, O. 1995, 210; Belfiore 2004).

F. R. Leavis

Arnoldian theories of culture provided a powerful and influential

inspiration to the work of the critic and academic F. R Leavis (1895–
1978). In one of his most important essays, Mass Civilisation and
Minority Culture (1930), Leavis explicitly establishes himself as the
heir, in postwar times, of the Arnoldian campaign for a search for a
cultural authority that could counteract the perceived intellectual,
social and cultural degeneration of the times. However, in Leavis’s
view, his own task was even tougher than it had been for Arnold a
century before. Indeed, a new dramatic development had produced a
stark contrast between the present situation and that witnessed by
Arnold: the ‘mass’ was now beginning to actively challenge the status
of the intellectual minority, and this had resulted in the creation of a
new and oppositional language which aimed at subverting traditional
forms of cultural authority (Baldick 1987, 163). In response to such
developments, Leavis puts forward an elitist theory based on the
assumption that true culture is only attainable through a literary edu-
cation, and that the minority of people who, in his opinion, were
genuinely in possession of such culture represented the consciousness
and moral guide of humanity as a whole:

The minority capable not only of appreciating Dante, Shakespeare,

Donne, Baudelaire, Hardy (to take major instances) but of recognis-
ing their latest successors constitutes the consciousness of the race
(or of a branch of it) at a given time. [...] Upon this minority depends
138 The Social Impact of the Arts

our power of profiting by the finest human experience of the past;

they keep alive the subtlest and most perishable parts of tradition.
Upon them depend the implicit standards that order the finer living
of an age, the sense that this is worth more than that, this rather
than that is the direction in which to go, that the centre is here
rather than there.
(in Baldick 1987, 164–5)

A logical corollary of such a position was the centrality of English

departments within academia, which Leavis envisaged as the nucleus of
such ‘consciousness of the race’, and therefore as a central agent in the
regeneration of both society and culture:

To revive or replace a decayed tradition is a desperate undertaking;

the attempt may seem futile. [...] The more immediate conclusions
would seem to bear upon education. [...] Something in the nature of
luck is needed; the luck, let us say, that provides a centre of stimulus
and a focus of energy at some university. All that falls under the head
of ‘English’ there becomes, then, in spite of Mr H. G. Wells, of
supreme importance.
(in Johnson 1979, 103)

What gets lost in Leavis’s own re-interpretation of the civilising pow-

ers of the arts and their potential to counteract negative developments
in society is the democratic impetus that moved Arnold to say that cul-
ture ‘is not satisfied until we all come to a perfect man; it knows that the
sweetness and light of the few must be imperfect until the raw and
unkindled masses of humanity are touched with sweetness and light’
(Arnold 1993 edn, 78–9). Indeed, as Watson points out:

by a supreme paradox, [Leavis] seems to have seen no place for litera-

ture outside school and colleges, showed no interest in visiting thea-
tres and cinemas or encouraging others to do so, and always conceived
of literary understanding as uniquely an outcome of master-pupil
relations. ‘Everything must start from, and be associated with the
training of sensibility’. The exploring scholar seeking the unknown
or the unfamiliar meant nothing to him; neither did the lonely
reader in love with a book. Leavis was an Eliotian, and Eliot’s theory
of tradition – of a sensibility handed down by an elite from genera-
tion to generation – lay enduringly at the heart of his faith.
(2000, 75)
 Moral Improvement and Civilisation 139

Because of his influence over English academia, Leavis has exerted a

profound authority over postwar literary and cultural criticism, and, in
many respects, the discipline of cultural studies developed as an attempt
to counteract Leavis’s influential understanding of the literary canon
and of cultural value.6 Arguments purporting the transformative and
civilising powers of the arts are, indeed, still alive and well, both in the
intellectual arena and in the public discourse surrounding their value
and functions in present-day society. A representative example of con-
temporary versions of this argument is provided by Roger Scruton
(1947–), who has been making the case for the civilising role of art and
their moral function repeatedly over the past three decades. So, in his
Art and Imagination (1974, 248–9), he writes:

The relation between moral and aesthetic judgement suggests that

standards for the validity of the one will provide standards for the
validity of the other. To show what is bad in a sentimental work of
art must involve showing what is bad in sentimentality. To be certain
in matters of taste is, therefore, to be certain in matters of morality:
ethics and aesthetics are one.
(1974, 248–9)

More recently, writing for the Guardian newspaper in distinctly

Leavisite tones, he has suggested that taste is intimately connected with
moral development:

Through melody, harmony and rhythm, we enter a world in which

others exist beside the self, a world that is full of feeling but also
ordered, disciplined and free. That is why music is a character-
forming force, and the decline of musical taste a decline in morals.
The anomie of Nirvana and REM is the anomie of its listeners. To
withhold all judgement, as if taste in music were on a par with taste
in ice-cream, is precisely not to understand the power of music.
(Scruton 1997)

In a similar vein, philosopher Martha Nussbaum has suggested that

Greek tragedies and realistic novels constitute an integral part of moral
philosophy,7 by compensating for the expressive limitations of philo-
sophical writing. As she explains in her Love’s Knowledge:

there may be some views of the world and how one should live in it –
views, especially, that emphasize the world’s surprising variety, its
140 The Social Impact of the Arts

complexity and mysteriousness, its flawed and imperfect beauty – that

cannot be fully and adequately stated in the language of conventional
philosophical prose, a style remarkably flat and lacking in wonder –
but only in a language and in forms themselves more complex, more
allusive, more attentive to particulars. Not perhaps, either, in the
expositional structure conventional to philosophy, which sets out to
establish something and then does so, without surprise, without
incident – but only in a form that itself implies that life contains sig-
nificant surprises, that our task, as agents, is to live as good characters
in a good story, caring about what happens, resourcefully confronting
each new thing. If these views are serious candidates for truth, views
that the search for truth ought to consider along its way, then it seems
that this language and these forms ought to be included within
philosophy.
(1990, 3–4)

Nussbaum develops further her argument for the moralizing power of

literature in her Poetic Justice, where she makes an explicit case for the
transforming power of the experience of reading works of literature:

I make two claims, then, for the reader’s experience: first, that
it provides insights that should play a role (though not as uncriti-
cized foundations) in the construction of an adequate moral and
political theory; second, that it develops moral capacities without
which citizens will not succeed in making reality out of the
normative conclusions of any moral or political theory, however
excellent. [...] novel-reading will not give us the whole story about
social justice, but it can be a bridge both to a vision of justice and to
the social enactment of that vision.
(1995, 12)

Legal theorist Robin West concurs with Nussbaum on the profound

moral value of literature – to the extent of suggesting that literature might
‘serve as a moral criticism of [law]’ – and maintains that ‘[l]iterature helps
us understand others. Literature helps us sympathise with their pain, it
helps us share their sorrow, and it helps us celebrate their joy. It makes us
more moral. It makes us better people’ (in Posner 1997, 4).
These arguments had already been prefigured in the 1950s, in the
writing of Marxist philosopher and literary theorist György Lukács
(1885–1971), whose Art as Superstructure (1955) makes a passionate dec-
laration in favour of the moralising nature of the arts that belies the
 Moral Improvement and Civilisation 141

extent to which this strand of thinking about the effects of the arts is
indebted to Aristotle’s notion of catharsis:

That moving and shaking effect, that convulsion which is provided

by tragedy, comedy, the novel, the good painting, the good statue,
that purging of our passions, causes us to become better human
beings than we were, to develop in us the readiness for the
morally good.
(in Taylor 1978, 83)

Lukács’s passionate trust in the transformational powers of art is reiter-

ated in his later work The Peculiarity of Aesthetics (1963), where he fur-
ther elaborates on this theme:

The effect of the art work upon man after the experience remains
almost completely imperceptible, and only a whole series of similar
experiences will reveal visible attitudinal, cultural, etc., changes;
frequently, of course, a single art work may bring about a complete
turnabout in a man’s life.
(in Taylor 1978, 83)

The arts and colonialism

Before we move on to the next category of claims for the arts, we need
to consider one further aspect of the notion of ‘civilisation’ with respects
to the arts – that is, the idea prevalent in nineteenth-century Britain
and Europe that the arts could provide an ethical justification for the
imperial and colonial enterprise. A typical example of the discourses
around the civilising mission of Europe in the colonies is represented by
the writings of J. A. Symonds (1840–1893), who, in his The Renaissance
in Italy (an encyclopaedic opus written between 1875 and 1886), wrote:

Such is the Lampadephoria, or torch-race, of the nations. Greece

stretches forth her hand to Italy; Italy consigns the fire to Northern
Europe; the people of the North pass on the flame to America, to
India, and the Australian isles.
(in Davies 1997, 24)

This motif of the torch-bearing European continent bringing the light of

civilization to as yet uncivilised countries overseas, and the related
142 The Social Impact of the Arts

notion of what Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) famously dubbed ‘the white

man’s burden’ (to spread said civilisation) indeed recurs time and time
again in the literature of this period.8 The opening lines of Kipling’s
famous 1898 poem ‘The white man’s burden’, are worth quoting here:

Take up the White Man’s burden-

Send forth the best ye breed-
Go bind yours sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild-
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.9

The justificatory nature of such arguments in favour of the civilising

role of European, and particularly British, colonisers has been exten-
sively investigated by contemporary post-colonial studies. In particular,
Louis Lindsay, in his essay The Myth of a Civilising Mission, writes:

The myth that England was carrying the ‘white man’s burden’ served
to ennoble imperialist designs giving to them a kind of missionary
zeal, frequently characterised by deeply fanatical and unswerving
commitments. It was primarily the conception which they had of
themselves as cultural missionaries which allowed Englishmen to
speak with such fervour and pride on the things which they had
allegedly done for their colonies and the multiple and uncountable
blessings which imperial rule supposedly bestowed on the non-white
races of the world. [...] The alleged civilising mission of British coloni-
alism became established over time as something of an independent
ideology with its own kind of autonomous dynamic. It became, so to
speak, the ‘moral fig leaf’ which covered, justified and rationalised
virtually all aspects of British imperialism.
(1981, 10–11; emphasis added)

In her perceptive study of the development of English literature as a

subject of academic study, Gauri Viswanathan10 (1989, 2–3) points out
that the discipline entered the curriculum in the colonies long before it
was institutionalised in the British islands. Her conclusion is indeed that
the age of colonialism was a crucial moment for the establishment of the
discipline of English, so that ‘no serious account of its growth and
development can afford to ignore the imperial mission of educating and
 Moral Improvement and Civilisation 143

civilizing colonial subjects in the literature and thought of England, a

mission that in the long run served to strengthen Western cultural
hegemony in complex ways’ (ibid., 2). Viswanathan’s (ibid., 10) broader
point is that the British colonisers used English literary studies as a tool
to pursue a ‘strategy of containment’ in the colonies, and particularly in
India, in a bid to quell all potential rebellions through cultural authority
rather than relying on military power alone. In Viswanathan’s own
words, ‘[t]here is little doubt that a great deal of strategic manoeuvring
went into the creation of a blueprint for social control in the guise of a
humanistic program of enlightenment’ (ibid.). This view indeed con-
firms what Antonio Gramsci famously pointed out when he wrote that

the supremacy of a social group manifests itself in two ways, as ‘dom-

ination’ and as ‘intellectual and moral leadership’. [...] It seems
clear [...] that there can and indeed must, be hegemonic activity even
before the rise to power, and that one should not count only on the
material force which power gives in order to exercise effective
leadership.
(in Forgacs 1988, 249 and 250)

It is therefore unsurprising that the rhetoric of the civilising mission of

imperial nations was quite often subscribed to not just by the colonis-
ers, but by the colonised too, who implicitly acknowledged the alleged
cultural superiority of the colonising nation (Mann 2004, 2–3). This, in
turn, had significant consequences, for it slowed down the processes by
which oppressed colonies begun to press for de-colonisation and the
recognition of their own cultural values. From the point of view of the
imperial powers, however, this shows the degree to which the civilising
mission myth proved a most effective tool in support of the imperial
enterprise. As Parita Mukta (1999, 27) puts it, ‘[t]he “civilizing mission”
was heavily implicated in the process of imperial subjugation, and the
assertion of a cultural/political superiority’.11
In her discussion of the mechanisms by which colonial subjects end
up internalising the images, ideas, traditions and cultural values of the
colonising country, whilst at the same time devaluing and disregarding
their own original culture, Tatiana Aleksić (2002, 350) shows how the
phenomenon discussed above is far from having disappeared following
de-colonisations processes in the twentieth century:

Western images, experience, knowledge and especially literature

and the arts, are shown as universal, of global interest and thus
144 The Social Impact of the Arts

universally acceptable, even desired. Everything else is ‘local’,

‘limited’, or, in a word, ‘exotic’ – interesting, but not globally appeal-
ing. Works of art written or made by western authors are a priori
considered valuable and ‘universal’, appealing to the public across
the globe.
(2002, 350)

Furthermore, Aleksić (ibid., 351) raises a number of points with regard

to what has been termed ‘benevolent racism’ that are of great relevance
to the contemporary cultural debates in the United Kingdom. Here,
issues of under-representation of artistic expressions produced by
cultural minorities within the publicly subsidised arts have become
politically embarrassing, so that cultural diversity has become a top
priority for bodies such as the Arts Council:12

The West has different strategies through which it can always ‘prove’
its benevolence to those unwilling to delve deeper into the heart of
the colonial matter. Statistically, there has been an increase in the
number of artists of African or Asian origin who have been rewarded
and acknowledged in the artistic world of the West. They are usually
praised for ‘bringing something new’ to the world of artistic expres-
sion, or ‘contributing’ to the ‘multicultural’ world of the West, etc.
Often what lies behind this seemingly positive trend is just another
ploy by the West in its struggle to preserve its ‘whiteness’. Writers
and artists who are ‘lucky’ enough to be allowed to enter the Western
arts world get support and recognition if, and only if, they remain
within the limits of their ‘national/ethnic tradition’. It can be argued
that they are not accepted into the artistic world as individuals, as free
creating subjects, rather they are seen as symbols of the Other, and the
recognition and praise they receive is a mere token gesture. They are
desired for the exoticism of the otherness their native traditions
supposedly bring with them.

In other words, could it be that the existence of specific policy meas-

ures to foster cultural diversity and promote, for instance, Black or
Asian cultural and artistic forms might actually be a way to unwit-
tingly, yet endlessly, reproduce and reinforce the marginalisation of
those very artistic expressions that the state aims to encourage?
Answering such a complex question is beyond the scope of this book.
However, it is worth recording the concerns raised by the cultural sec-
tor over the possibility that cultural diversity policies might have, in
 Moral Improvement and Civilisation 145

fact, increased polarisation between mainstream and minority artistic

expressions. Tony Greaves (2003) has recently commented that:

If cultural diversity policy is a call to come out of our arts comfort (or
‘discomfort’) zones, both as black and white artists and practitioners,
and engage in different art forms and ideas on an equal footing –
then that is fine. However, the fundamental value system that oper-
ates within the arts sector has yet to be seriously challenged by
cultural diversity policy. Arts Council policy is still dictated by short-
hand terms, which has led to the frustration of many artists who are
caught in an arts identity trap not of their own making.

* * *

In conclusion, this chapter has reviewed theories that posit that the arts
have a humanising and civilising function is society. There are two
main strands to this category of claims. The first is characterised by
strong moral undertones, whereby the arts are seen as an essential tool
in a process of ethical self-improvement and refinement. Hence, the
recurring theme of the ‘ennobling’ powers of the aesthetic experience
that we have encountered in the writings analysed here. The second
thread in this group of writings is represented by the theme of the arts
as a force that can promote civilisation and contribute to the formation
of the perfect citizen. Here the emphasis is chiefly upon the civic dimen-
sion and socio-political significance of the transformation attributed to
the aesthetic experience. We have also looked at the way in which the
idea of the civilising power of the (Western) arts and culture was sys-
tematically deployed as a moral justification for the exploitation of the
colonies by European imperial nations at the turn of the nineteenth
century. This is indeed a clear instance of the employment of culture in
political matters. A more detailed discussion of how the arts have been
explicitly seen as a political instrument and a tool of social engineering
is the topic of the next chapter.
7
Political Instrument

Much of what we have discussed so far conforms to what M. H. Abrams

(1953, 15) defines as ‘pragmatic’ theories of art, for they all look ‘at the
work of art as a means to an end, an instrument to get something done,
and [tend] to judge its value according to its success in achieving that
aim’. With the present category, we witness what is arguably the most
pragmatic of the categories analysed so far, in that the instrumental
element is here most prominent. For reasons of space, we can only dis-
cuss a few examples of the claims that the arts may be effectively used
as a political instrument and as a tool for social engineering: the func-
tion of the arts within the Fascist and Nazi regimes; the theory of the
‘governmentalisation of culture’ put forward by Tony Bennett (1995
and 1998) on the basis of the thinking of the French theorist Michel
Foucault; and the notion of the theatre and the novel as agents of social
and political change.
Whilst we might not all agree with George Orwell that ‘all art is to
some extent propaganda’,1 one has to acknowledge that the tight links
between art and politics have been apparent throughout history. For
the subordination of the arts to politics, and more specifically, the use
of art for propaganda purposes is not a modern phenomenon. On the
contrary, it can be traced at least as far back as classical antiquity. The
reasons for such a long-standing connection are set out by Ellenius:

The Latin word repraesentatio means visualising, or illustrating, for

instance by using examples. In French and English usage, the word
‘representation’ carried the meaning of a visual or conceptual image,
often equivalent to a symbol or a metaphor. Ever since classical
antiquity, political power had been disguised in metaphors.
(1998, 2)

146
 Political Instrument 147

One of the reasons why the arts seemed a fruitful conduit for politics is
the fact that, as we have seen, the arts are believed to affect people in
many subtle ways. Even Plato’s concerns for the corrupting powers of
poetry and the theatre and their ban from the ideal polity can be con-
nected to the idea that art could provide a powerful social weapon, and
could therefore be politically dangerous (Leith 1965, 16–17).
Unsurprisingly, then, the arts – and visual imagery in particular – have
often been used in both crude and sophisticated ways to achieve polit-
ical ends. For instance, in her study of the use of art as propaganda in
ancient Rome, DeRose Evans (1992) shows how it was not only the art
forms most obviously suited to the expression of political ideas that
were used for propaganda, such as triumphal paintings. These were
certainly a central element of propaganda, since they could effectively
educate the illiterate populace on the successful military campaigns of
the Roman army and its leaders. Yet such magniloquent expressions of
political values through art were also accompanied by subtler ones. A
good example is the propagandistic nature of Roman coins, often used
by young members of the aristocracy to get the public to familiarise
themselves with their appearance, emblazoned in the coins, as this was
believed to give them a certain advantage when they embarked on a
high-profile political career. The Church also provides numerous
examples of how art was used to promote the main tenets of the
Christian faith, to the extent that medieval cathedrals have been
described as a ‘plastic presentation of the dogmas and traditions of the
Church’ (Leith 1965, 17).
Further examples of the link between art and politics can be found
during the French Revolution, whose leaders consciously and system-
atically employed a number of different art forms to promote the val-
ues of the Revolution. Dowd (1951) goes so far as to argue that many
propaganda techniques (such as the pageant and the festival) that
have become central to modern political activism were in fact first
created and perfected in eighteenth-century France. Dowd (ibid., 535)
suggests that, ‘[f]rom the practical point of view it was probably the
leaders of the Revolution who did more to promote the arts as a means
of stimulating national sentiment than any other single political
group until the twentieth century’. A further interesting point made
by Dowd is that many artists during the French Revolution were quite
happy to put their talent to the service of politics. Indeed, many of
the people who held important legislative and administrative posi-
tions throughout the Revolution were artists, and during the Reign of
the Terror, the Mayor of Paris was a sculptor. This declaration by the
148 The Social Impact of the Arts

painter Jacques-Louis David (himself a member, and at one time pres-

ident, of the Comité de sûreté générale of the Revolutionary movement)
is representative of the feelings of many French artists at that time:

Each of us is accountable to the fatherland [la patrie] for the talents

which he has received from nature. [...] The true patriot ought to seize
avidly upon every means of enlightening his fellow citizens and of
constantly presenting to their eyes the sublime traits of heroism and
virtue.

The artist [he said on another occasion] ought to contribute power-

fully to public instruction [...] by penetrating the soul [...] by making a
profound impression on the mind. [...] Thus [...] the traits of heroism
and civic virtue presented to the regard of the people will electrify its
soul and will cause to germinate in it all the passions of glory and
devotion to the welfare of the fatherland.
(in Dowd 1951, 537)

Jacques-Louis David, thus, highlights the explicit link between this

idea of the arts as a crucial element in political struggles and the idea
that the arts can profoundly affect values, beliefs and consciousness
that we have seen recurring time and time again in the writings dis-
cussed so far. It is however in the twentieth century that the idea of
art as propaganda finds its most powerful and shameful embodiment,
in the Fascist and Nazi ideology and in the two regimes’ cultural
policies. 2

Fascism and Nazism

As early as 1923, Mussolini, speaking at the opening of a contemporary

art exhibition in Milan, declared that it would be impossible to run a
country ignoring its arts and artists, and a government that decided to
do so, especially in a country like Italy, would simply be stupid3
(Margozzi 2001, 27). Unsurprisingly, then, art and artists were at the
very heart of Mussolini’s cultural and political strategy.
It has been argued that Italian Fascism equates to a political project
that had as its ultimate goal the formation of a new national culture and
identity for the Italian people. This aim was to be achieved through the
re-creation of the self, that is, through the moulding of the Italian people
with a view to creating ‘new identities as citizens of Fascist Italy’ (Berezin
 Political Instrument 149

1997, 5). As Doumanis further explains, the arts and culture had a
central role to play in this plan:

Mussolini sought to develop a national culture that engaged directly

with the masses, that appealed to their sensibilities and which they
might find emotionally uplifting. The new national culture was to
be celebrated through new rituals and commemorative practices,
through the creation and adoration of new or reinvented symbols
and sacred objects. [...] In most ways, Mussolini’s government was
demonstrably incompetent, but where it showed considerable inge-
nuity was in recognizing the importance of culture in politics. Its
attempts to solve the problem of mass politics by allowing for cul-
tural instead of political participation was probably Italian Fascism’s
most distinctive contribution to modern politics.
(2001, 146)

Unsurprisingly, then, ritual forms of mass cultural participation and

mobilisation perfected by the Fascist regime and public spectacle were
the preferred vehicle for the expression of the Fascist identity project. In
spite of the extensive restructuring of the educational system, Italy dur-
ing the Fascist Ventennio was a country with large areas inhabited by an
illiterate population that did not use the national language in everyday
life, and where access to culture was strongly limited. As a matter of
fact, only a small elite had the privilege of enjoying Italian high culture
and the great Italian artistic heritage (Berezin 1997, 47). Therefore, from
the regime’s perspective, ‘public spectacle’ – that is, grand public ritual-
istic events – were the perfect tool to reach a culturally unsophisticated
populace. It is beyond question that, from 1922 onwards, ‘spectacle
replaced aesthetics as a defining force within popular Fascist cultural
practice’ (ibid., 41). Great events, exhibitions, expositions, fairs and pro-
cessions with a distinct ritualistic flavour ensured that spectacle became
the regime’s privileged form of political communication.
It is with the ideology and the social engineering practices of the Nazi
regime, however, that the idea that the arts can and should have a polit-
ical purpose assumes its most powerful and disturbing articulation.
The task the Third Reich had given itself was no less than imposing the
National Socialist philosophy of life on the German people and the
conquered countries, so as to shape their minds, attitudes and behav-
iour. As in Fascism, art and culture seemed to provide a useful tool in
this endeavour. As Adams (1992, 10) explains, ‘[t]he National Socialists
150 The Social Impact of the Arts

discovered that art not only could carry a political message but was also
a perfect medium for creating and directing desires and dreams. It was
able to program people’s emotions and direct their behaviour.’ Nor was
Hitler himself in any way reluctant to make clear the link he saw
between art, politics and propaganda. Speaking at the Nuremberg Party
Day of 11 September 1935, Hitler declared:

Art has at all times been the expression of an ideological and religious
experience and at the same time the expression of a political will.
(quoted in Adams 1992, 9)

It is no surprise, then, that Hitler had an equally clear view of how the arts
were to help him achieve his political objectives. In a speech given at the
Reichstag in Berlin in 1933, shortly after seizing power, he announced:

Simultaneously with the purification of our public life, the govern-

ment of the Reich will undertake a thorough moral purging. The
entire educational system, the theater, the cinema, literature, press,
and broadcasting will be used as a means to that end.
(Adams 1992, 10).

Säuberung – cleansing or purification – thus became the central theme

of the Nazi political and cultural project, leading to a systematic
attempt to ‘Aryanise’ both the civil service and artistic institutions
(Spotts 2002, 30).
Hitler’s Mein Kampf (1925–6), where much of his thinking on art is to
be found, explicitly links the aesthetic sphere to the Nazi regime’s infa-
mous ‘problem of the Jews’. In the book, published over ten years before
his seizure of power, Hitler discussed in great detail his view of contem-
porary art as degenerate. He believed this degeneration of art to be a
product of a degenerate society where the cultural and genetic Aryan
element had become increasingly diluted (by the parasite and uncrea-
tive Jew). Therefore, he envisaged a special educational mission for the
German people based on the notion that the genetically pure Aryan
race was the true custodian of culture, whose task was to spread this
true culture as wide as possible. As Hitler explained in Mein Kampf, he
was dominated by what he felt as a higher calling:

the obligation in accordance with the Eternal Will that dominates

this universe to promote the victory of the better and stronger, and
to demand the submission of the worse and the weaker [...] In this
world human culture and civilization are inseparably bound up with
 Political Instrument 151

the existence of Aryan. His dying off or his decline would again
lower upon this earth the dark veils of a time without culture.
(in Adams 1992, 11)

As was the case in Fascist Italy, then, in Nazi Germany too, art was
identified as having the important task of forging the nation, by over-
coming social and economic barriers and moulding an organic com-
munity that shared the same values and beliefs (as well as hatred towards
the same targets). To a significant extent, the evolution of the Nazi
project did prove that the arts could be successfully harnessed as power-
ful social and political weapons. Indeed, as Carey (2005) and others
have suggested, the comfortable coexistence of Nazism and European
high culture has irredeemably undermined that culture’s claim to pos-
sess essentially ennobling properties.

‘Governmentalisation of culture’

Another articulation of the capacity of the arts to be used for political

ends is represented by Tony Bennett’s discussion of the ‘governmentali-
sation of culture’. This thesis represents a particular articulation of the
broader notion of the ‘governmentalisation of social relations’, which
Bennett (1992, 397) defines as ‘the management of populations by means
of specific knowledges, programmes and technologies – which, accord-
ing to Foucault, most clearly distinguishes modern forms of social regu-
lation from their predecessors’. Bennett refers here to the French thinker’s
influential critique of traditional Western political thought based on a
‘juridico-discoursive’ understanding of power, historically rooted in the
revitalisation of Roman Law in the Middle Ages and the centrality of the
monarchical institution in Western legal and political thinking.
As Foucault (1980) explains, traditional Western notions of political
power identify it as emanating from a single source (typically the mon-
arch) and thus trickling downwards in the social hierarchy until it reaches
and affects the populace. Against this traditional conception, Foucault pro-
poses his own alternative view. He suggests that, in order to understand
power and its workings in contemporary society, we ought to look at the
strategic apparatuses and the subtle mechanisms of domination and sub-
jection that shape society, rather than at traditional forms of sovereignty:

I would say that we should direct our researches on the nature of

power not towards the juridical edifice of sovereignty, the State appa-
ratuses and the ideologies which accompany them, but towards domi-
nation and the material operators of power, towards forms of subjection
152 The Social Impact of the Arts

and the inflections and utilisations of their localised systems, and

towards strategic apparatuses. We must eschew the model of Leviathan
in the study of power. We must escape from the limited field of juridi-
cal sovereignty and State institution, and instead base our analysis of
power on the study of the techniques and tactics of domination.
(1980, 102)

The consequences, for the historical researcher are clearly spelt out by
Foucault (ibid., 96) who explains that historical analysis should not

concern itself with the regulated and legitimate forms of power in

their central locations, with the general mechanisms through which
they operate, and the continual effects of these. On the contrary, it
should be concerned with power at its extremities, in its ultimate
destinations, with those points where it becomes capillary, that is, in
its more regional and local forms and institutions.
(1980, 96)

Foucault here refers to ‘governmental power’, which, as Tony Bennett

(1995, 22) explains, ‘is characterised by the multiplicity of objects which it
pursues, objectives which have their own authorisation and rationality
rather than being derived from the interests of some unifying central prin-
ciple of power such as the sovereign or, in later formulations, the state’.
In Bennett’s own adaptation of the Foucauldian concept of govern-
mental power to the field of cultural history, the nineteenth century is
identified as a crucial moment in the process of ‘governmentalisation’.
In this view, culture – and, in particular, high culture – becomes pro-
gressively instrumentalised in order to become useful as a means of
social management, and, furthermore, social engineering (Bennett
1992, 1995, 1998 ch. 5). In particular, Tony Bennett argues that, at this
point in time, culture becomes embroiled in a number of tactics being
developed in order to change the behaviour and personal conduct of
the populace, with a view to establishing a system for the ‘government
of the self’ to replace the older top-down version of sovereignty and
power. In Bennett’s own words:

The critical developments affecting the sphere of culture in these

regards concerned the shift – which, of course, was a relative rather
than a total one – from a conception in which culture served power
by embodying, staging or representing it, making it spectacularly
visible. In place of this, culture was increasingly thought of as a
 Political Instrument 153

resource to be used in programmes which aimed at bringing about

changes in acceptable norms and forms of behaviour and consolidat-
ing those norms as self-acting imperatives by inscribing them within
broadly disseminated regimes of self-management.
(1995, 23)

What Bennett is arguing in this somewhat laboured passage is that, in

the course of the nineteenth century, certain types of ‘rational recrea-
tions’ and cultural activities (such as visiting public museums and arts
galleries, which are ‘invented’ precisely around this time) were shaped in
such a way that they could be used for political ends due to their power
to shape public morals and behaviour.4 These ends would be usually
presented in the guise of the now familiar theme of the ‘civilising pow-
ers’ of the arts. Moreover, the civilising effects of culture were expected
to bear all sorts of social benefits, as a result of the changed forms of
behaviour that exposure to the arts would ensure (Bennett 1998, 122).
Bennett makes use of extensive quotations from English writers of the
nineteenth century and Parliamentary debates of the times, which
would appear to confirm that precisely at this time a conscious effort
was being made to instrumentalise culture (and especially ‘high’ cul-
ture) for political ends that related to social control and the modifica-
tion of the behaviour of the urban poor. If we come back to the already
mentioned essay by Jevons (1883, 32), Methods of Social Reforms, we find
an explicit reference to the political benefits and social engineering
potential – in terms of crime reduction – of the investment made by the
state on libraries, museums and concert halls:

Now, this small cost is not only repaid many times over by the multi-
plication of utility of the books, newspapers and magazines on which
it is expended, but it is likely, after the lapse of years, to come back
fully in the reduction of poor-rates and Government expenditure on
crime. We are fully warranted in looking upon Free Libraries as an
engine for operating upon the poorer portions of the population.

Similarly, this passage from Thomas Greenwood’s 1888 essay Museums

and Art Galleries confirms that the civilising effect of the arts were
expected to result in changed habits and manners, and to work as an
antidote to antisocial behaviour:

After a holiday spent in a Museum the working man goes home and
cons over what he has seen at his leisure, and very probably, on the
154 The Social Impact of the Arts

next summer holiday, or a Sunday afternoon walk with his wife and
little ones, he discovers that he has acquired a new interest in the
common things he sees around him. [...] He has gained a new sense,
a craving for natural knowledge, and such a craving may, possibly, in
course of time, quench other and lower craving which may at one
time have held him bondage – that for intoxicant or vicious excite-
ment of one description or another.
(in Bennett 1992, 400)

At the time when Greenwood wrote his essay on the civilising powers
of museums and arts galleries, indeed, it was common belief that popu-
lar improvement in taste and appreciation of the arts would directly
result in moral progress (Minihan 1977, 52). In the late 1830s, already,
William Ewart Gladstone, alluding to the British Museum and the
National Gallery – which had been opened thanks to public funding –
proclaimed that: ‘the State offers to its individual members those
humanising influences which are derived from the contemplation of
Beauty embodied in the works of great masters of painting’. He goes on
to conclude that: ‘the higher instruments of human cultivation are also
ultimate guarantees of public order’ (quoted in Minihan 1977, 32).
The Victorians were adamant about the civilising potential of the fine
arts. They even believed that once the fine arts had been given the
chance to operate their magic on the British working classes, these would
forsake the ale-house for artistic pursuits. Such an achievement would
reduce alcohol abuse and the chances of public disorders while promot-
ing social cohesion. To borrow the words of Allan Cunningham, Scottish
poet and journalist, the beneficiaries of the elevating effects of the arts
were: ‘[m]en who are usually called “mob”; but they cease to become
mob when they get a taste’ (Minihan 1977, 89). Sir Martin Archer Shee,
when asked to testify in front of a Parliamentary Select Committee on
Fine Arts in 1841, elaborated further on this belief:

that the object of the Committee is, not so much, to forward the arts
themselves, as through their influence to advance their great end,
towards which the promotion of the fine arts can be considered but
as means, the civilization of our people; to give to their minds a
direction which may tend to withdraw them from habits of gross
and sensual indulgence; to secure and sustain the intellectual
supremacy of our country, not only with respect to the present age,
but with reference to posterity [...].
(in Minihan 1977, 68)
 Political Instrument 155

It is clear from these quotations that arts promotion was not seen as an
end in itself, but rather as an alternative to forms of social activity and
recreation that were seen as undesirable and dangerous. Arguments sim-
ilar to those put forward by Jevons for museums and libraries also fig-
ured prominently, in Britain, in the second half of the nineteenth
century, in debates over the opportunity for the government to establish
a National Theatre, as shown by the poet Richard Henry Horne’s words:

A regular, systematic stage influence upon national character of the

kind we advocate, must eventually exercise its due, its inevitable
power of softening, purifying, and elevating, and thus render the aid
of a National Theatre well worthy the consideration of a wise and
economic Government, were it only from the saving it would effect
in the cost of the various departments of our penal legislature and
reformatory institutions [...].
(in Minihan 1977, 143)

Such considerations seem to confirm – on the one hand – Bennett’s

notion of the attachment of the arts to a governmental agenda in the
nineteenth century; and, on the other, that the use of the arts as a tool
to promote social cohesion is by no means a novel element of contempo-
rary cultural policies.
Whilst the discussion has, so far, focused mainly on the use – or
rather – the abuse of the arts within political regimes that did not shy
away from instrumentalising the cultural sphere in the pursuit of
their political programmes, there is another dimension of the idea
that the arts can contribute to the political agenda of the day that we
need to consider. We refer here to a more positive and, indeed, redemp-
tive view of the ways in which the arts operate in society, and the
connected belief that the arts can be a progressive force that can bring
about change and improvements in the lot of disenfranchised and
oppressed groups. For reason of space, our discussion of this aspect of
the present category of impact will focus on a necessarily brief analy-
sis of the ‘committed’ novel and political theatre.

The ‘committed’ novel

The idea that novels can change history, fight slavery and oppression,
bring about legal change and generally have a major role to play in polit-
ical struggles is very old and deep-seated in the collective consciousness
of the West. In 1879, George Eliot forcefully declared that the ‘man or
156 The Social Impact of the Arts

woman who publishes writings inevitably assumes the office of teacher

or influencer of the public mind’ (in Allott 1959, 94). A similar faith has
been expressed, more recently, by the controversial French writer Roger
Garaudy,5 who is credited with the declaration that ‘[a] good book [...] is a
force, a tool or weapon, to make the dreams of today become the reality
of tomorrow’ (in Caute 1971, 7–3) . This is by no means a view universally
shared by all novelists,6 not even those whose work can be defined as
broadly ‘political’. Günter Grass, for example, has repeatedly argued,
throughout his career, against the limitations entailed by an explicitly
‘committed’ stance on the part of novelists. As he polemically puts it:

From the start, even before inserting his paper into the typewriter,
the committed writer writes, not novels, poems or comedies, but
committed literature [...] Everything else, which takes in a good deal,
is disparaged as art for art’s sake.
(in Caute 1971, 34)

Whether the explicit concern of the artist for ideas and values that are
extrinsic to immediately aesthetic or artistic considerations is detrimen-
tal to the literary value of the novel itself is a debate beyond the scope of
the present analysis.7 Nevertheless, it remains unquestionable that the
history of literature and literary criticism is scattered with examples of
novels that are said to have exercised direct political influence over their
times. Michael Hanne (1996, 37) suggests that one of the earliest and
best known examples is Goethe’s The Sorrow of Young Werther, the alleged
impacts of which have already been discussed in Chapter 2. Other illus-
trious examples might be the novels of Charles Dickens and Charles
Kingsley, which, by exposing the social ills of nineteenth-century
Britain, are said to have been partly responsible for the wave of social
and legal reforms that gained momentum towards the end of the cen-
tury. On the other side of the Atlantic, the publication, in 1906, of Upton
Sinclair’s The Jungle, with its stark depiction of the hard lives of the work-
ers in the meat-packing industry in Chicago, is commonly believed to
have been the main stimulus for the passage of the ‘Pure Food and Drug
Act’ in the US congress a mere few months afterwards (ibid.).
Similarly, in his study of eighteenth-century literature, John Bender
(1987) argues that the attitudes to prison that were formulated in narra-
tive fictions published between 1719 and 1779 enabled and, in fact,
shaped a new view of the penitentiary that eventually found its embod-
iment in the construction of new prisons towards the end of the century.
According to Bender’s account, ‘Defoe, Gay, Hogarth, and Fielding all
 Political Instrument 157

predicate the new prisons in the very act of depicting the old’ (ibid., 3).
Such a conclusion is necessarily based upon a view of the novel (and art
in general) not as a mere reflection of historical reality, but rather as an
agent with the discrete power to shape history and enact direct social,
political, cultural and legal change. In Bender’s own words:

[...] we can see more in works of art than mere reflections. They clar-
ify structures of feeling characteristic of a given moment and thereby
predicate those available in the future. This is the specific sense in
which they may serve as a medium of cultural emergence through
which new images of society, new cultural systems, move into focus
and become tangible.
(1987, 7)

Hanne (1996, 34) suggests that the alleged power of the novel to shape
reality and ‘make’ history can be explained by the fact that not only
do most novels deal with real and recognisable places and times and
refer to widely known historical events; but also, and more impor-
tantly, the reader’s fascination with novels ultimately lies in his or her
belief that they provide accurate representations and observations of
actual human and social processes. This, Hanne argues, has obvious
repercussions in the political sphere, for most people’s sense of their
own history and the history of other peoples is more likely to be
derived from fiction and film than from a thorough study of the work
of historians. Nor is this is by any means limited to poorly educated
individuals, for it is likely that most well-read people will have gained
their understanding of, say, 1840s Russia from their encounters with
the works of Gogol and Turgenev, in the same way that many people’s
understanding of contemporary multicultural Britain might have
been mediated by the works of writers such as Hanif Kureishi, Monica
Ali and Zadie Smith. In other words, Hanne maintains, we tend to
treat fictional narratives as a fully legitimate source of historical infor-
mation which is at least complementary to, if not substitutive for, his-
toriography proper:

We derive general impression of living conditions of different classes,

forms of social interaction, political processes, all of which we take to
be typical of the period and place, from the fictional narratives we
read, despite our awareness that most of the characters and events
included in the story did not exist outside it.
(1996, 35)
158 The Social Impact of the Arts

If we accept Hanne’s argument as accurate, we can begin to better

understand the ways in which novels may become – through their pub-
lication, distribution, consumption and interpretation – a vehicle for
change in social and political history. One of the most common ways in
which narrative fictions can achieve this is by telling a story that has
never previously been told, with all the political implications which
this might encompass, since ‘storytelling [...] is always associated with
the exercise, in one sense or another, of power, of control’ (ibid., 8).
Indeed, two opposed views of the relation of storytelling to power have
been playing each other out in the academic arena. On the one hand,
some have suggested that all forms of storytelling (novel-writing
included) necessarily contribute to the reproduction of the dominant
ideology. Hence, for instance, Robert Scholes’s (1980, 212) call for an
‘anti-narrative’, on the grounds that ‘traditional narrative structures
[can be] perceived as part of a system of psychosocial dependences that
inhibit both individual human growth and significant social change.
To challenge and lay bare these structures is thus a necessary prelude to
any improvement in the human situation.’ A large number of literary
critics and political philosophers within the Marxist tradition have
indeed explored extensively the ways in which cultural production and
consumption are embroiled in the political and economic context of
the times, so that ultimately a society’s power structure not only finds
itself reflected in the cultural sphere, but also strengthened through it.
On the other hand, however, other commentators have maintained
that there are ways in which storytelling can be disruptive of the exist-
ing social order, and thus, liberating and progressive. The crucial way in
which storytelling can achieve this, is by telling previously untold sto-
ries, thus offering a perspective on the world that had been, until then,
not voiced and thus not legitimised.8 For instance, Ross Chambers sug-
gests that the key to understanding the impacts of the novel lies in its
‘power of seduction’: since the power of a novel to seduce its readers is a
non-coercive form of power, it can be harnessed against other forms of
coercion. In Chambers’ own words:

If such power [the novel’s] can be called the power of seduction, it is

because seduction is, by definition, a phenomenon of persuasion: it
cannot rely on force or institutional authority (‘power’) for it is, pre-
cisely, a means of achieving mastery in the absence of such means of
control. It is the instrument available to the situationally weak
against the situationally strong.
(1984, 212)
 Political Instrument 159

Hence, the obvious conclusion:

such seduction, producing authority where there is no power, is a

means of converting (historical) weakness into (discursive) strength.
As such, it appears as a major weapon against alienation, an instru-
ment of self-assertion, and an ‘oppositional practice’ of considerable
significance.
(Chambers 1984, 212)

The possibilities thus opened up for the novel to be a force for ethical
and political reflection and a potential spur to action are articulated by
Derek Attridge in the preface to his study of the South African writer
J. M. Coetzee:

The importance of Coetzee’s books, I believe, lies not only in their

extraordinary ability to grip the reader in proceeding from sentence
to sentence and from page to page, to move intensely with their
depiction of cruelty, suffering, longing and love, to give pleasure
even when they dispirit and disturb, but also in the way they raise
and illuminate questions of immense practical importance to all of
us. These include the relation between ethical demands and political
decisions, the human cost of artistic creation, the exactingness and
uncertainty of confessional autobiography, and the difficulty of
doing justice to others in a violent society.
(2004, x)

It would be misleading, however, to assume that the novel can impact

on history and society in a direct and straightforward manner. Attridge
himself goes on to discuss the ways in which Coetzee has engaged with
the difficult social and political issues of his native country (namely
colonialism and its multifaceted legacy of oppression) in a way that
highlights the complexity, ethical and political, of contemporary South
Africa – so as to discourage any easy expectations of a simple and clear
moral or political conclusion to be drawn from his novels. The com-
plexity of the position of the ‘committed’ novelist was highlighted by
Coetzee himself, who during a controversial speech in Cape Town in
1987, declared:

in times of intense ideological pressure like the present, when the

space in which the novel and history normally coexist like two cows
on the same pasture, each minding its own business, is squeezed to
160 The Social Impact of the Arts

almost nothing, the novel, it seems to me, has only two options,
supplementary or rivalry.
(in Attridge 2004, 14)

Coetzee himself, rather unsurprisingly, then went on to advocate the

latter option.
A slightly different attitude is expressed by the concept of litérature de
témoignage, that is ‘literature which seeks to bear witness to its time’,
which Margaret Atack (1989, 16 ff.) suggests as a useful paradigm for
understanding the literary production of the French Resistance that
flourished in the years of the Nazi occupation. The concept derives from
a book by the French academic Jean Norton Cru entitled Du Témoignage
(1940). This is a discussion of First World War literature, which also
explores in great detail the broader question of the nature and impor-
tance of documentary literature. In Cru’s view, the true novel is the one
that faithfully records what its author has witnessed, any embellishment
and ornament being superfluous to the real meaning and objective of
the writing. In his usage, témoignage indicates an active (rather than
reactive) stance, whereby the aim of the writer is to transmit the moral
lesson to be learned from the events witnessed and registered by the
writer. Needless to say, Cru’s unquestioned belief in literature as the
reflection of an event, and the issue of the extent to which a subjective
account of an event can be accepted as authentic are all highly problem-
atic (Atack 1989). Yet, Cru’s stance and motivation as a writer, despite the
internal contradictions of his theorising, are representative, we would
argue, of the inspiration of much politically engaged fiction writing.
A further complication lies in the fact that if we accept that novels
might be written and used as political weapons, then we might have to
accept that, like all weapons, they might be used to fight for the oppo-
site side; or they might be used to fight battles different from those first
envisaged by their authors; or, even, they might be employed in the
context of several different political battles at the same time. As Hanne
puts it:

At a certain point, [...] authors’ political intentions – which, like autho-

rial intentions in general, are in any case ultimately unknowable – in
a sense become irrelevant, as groups of readers wittingly or unwit-
tingly appropriate the text for their own purposes. Writers have no
means of limiting, let alone absolutely determining, the readings to
which their works will be subjected.
(1996, 4)
 Political Instrument 161

Many of the considerations discussed here with regards to the engaged

novel are also relevant to the theatre, often referred to as the ‘most
political of all art forms’ (Patterson 2003, 1). This is true particularly of
‘political theatre’, which Michael Patterson (ibid., 3) defines as ‘a kind of
theatre that not only depicts social interaction and political events but
implies the possibility of radical change on socialist lines: the removal
of injustice and autocracy and their replacement by the farer distribu-
tion of wealth and more democratic systems’.

Political theatre

Patterson (2003, 1) is indeed referring here to that strand of playwriting

of the twentieth century that had an explicit intention to convert audi-
ences to new ways of thinking, by becoming ‘more overtly political,
questioning not so much social morality as the fundamental organiza-
tion of society, with the emphasis on economics rather than on ethics’
(ibid.). Central figures in this development, which was often indebted to
and expressive of a Marxist analysis of the state of society, were German
theatre producer and director Erwin Piscator (1898–1956) and play-
wright Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956). They were amongst the first theatre
professionals to suggest, through the stage, a socialist alternative to the
status quo of their times. It is, in fact, to Piscator’s essay of 1929, entitled
precisely ‘Political Theatre’, that we owe this commonly used label.
Brecht’s development of the theory and practice of ‘epic theatre’ and
his attempts to transform the theatre into a place where political ideas
could be explored and divulged represents a central moment in the
development of contemporary political theatre. Brecht himself tries to
explain the difference between traditional theatre and the new kind of
‘epic theatre’ he advocates thus:

The dramatic theatre’s spectator says: Yes, I have felt like that too –
Just like me – It’s only natural, – It’ll never change – The sufferings of
this man appals me, because they are inescapable – That’s great art;
it all seems the most obvious thing in the world – I weep when they
weep, I laugh when they laugh.

The epic theatre’s spectator says: I’d never have thought it – That’s
not the way – That’s extraordinary, hardly believable – It’s got to
stop – The sufferings of this man appal me, because they are unnec-
essary – That’s great art: nothing obvious in it – I laugh when they
weep, I weep when they laugh.
(Brecht 1964 edn, 71)
162 The Social Impact of the Arts

Brecht felt, in other words, that theatre should, by observing and

depicting reality, make it possible to actually change that reality. This,
however, he felt to be impossible in traditional theatre because of the
invisible ‘fourth wall’ that kept the audience separated from the play.
Spectators were thus required to identify with the actors and therefore
their point of view, with the result that a critical stance was impossible
to achieve. Realistic theatre was no more capable of side-stepping these
issues than conventional theatre:

Those naturalistic images of yours were badly manufactured. The point

of view you chose for your representation made genuine criticism
impossible. People identified themselves with you and came to terms
with the world. You were what you were; the world stays as it was.
(in Banerjee 1977, 176)

‘Epic theatre’ on the other hand, would be different, and by providing

audiences with a radically different type of theatrical experience would
also allow for genuine social and political transformation:

The spectator was no longer in any way allowed to submit to an expe-

rience uncritically (and without practical consequences) by means of
simple empathy with the characters in a play. The production took the
subject-matter and the incidents shown and put them through a proc-
ess of alienation: the alienation that is necessary to all understanding.
When something seems ‘the most obvious thing in the world’ it means
that any attempt to understand the world has been given up.

What is ‘natural’ must have the force of what is startling. This is the
only way to expose the laws of cause and effect. People’s activity
must simultaneously be so and be capable of being different.
(Brecht 1964 edn, 71)

In Britain, ‘political theatre’ became particularly lively in the postwar

years, and – according to some commentators had lost much of its impe-
tus by the mid-1980s (Peacock 1999; Patterson 2003). As we have seen,
since the time of Classical Greece, the theatre has been considered a
privileged forum for the debate of delicate and complex political and
ethical issues. The very nature of the performing arts, by bringing peo-
ple together in a communal aesthetic experience, lends itself to this role
as a site of communication and questioning. It is the intrinsically public
and communal nature of theatre that is seen as preserving its potential
for political influence in the era of the mass media. This is how David
 Political Instrument 163

Hare (1947–), an English playwright working within the arena of what

we have defined as ‘political theatre’, explains the limitations of televi-
sion as a tool for social and political critique:

The inherent problem with television as an agent of radical ideas is

that its massive audience is not confronted en masse. It is con-
fronted in the atomised arena of the family living room, the place
where people are at their least critical, their most conservative and
reactionary. [...] The television audience, approached in the midst of
their private and personal existence, are much more likely than col-
lectively addressed audiences to take an individual, personalised
(and therefore psychological rather than social) view of the behav-
iour demonstrated to them.
(1988, 38)

It would thus appear that whilst works of art can be seen, in certain
circumstances, as agents of social and political change, certain art forms
are more prone to achieving these ends than others, the theatre having
an obvious advantage over other, more private, aesthetic experiences.
Whether the theatre can actually succeed in producing this shift in
people’s political beliefs and therefore aid actual political change remains
to be seen. It is interesting to note that the attempt of British playwrights
to counteract the advent and instauration of Thatcherism and its values
was commonly seen as unsuccessful. This is how the dramatist Howard
Brenton recalls his own and his fellow writers’ attempt to overturn the
political climate of the 1980s through their writing:

Thatcherism, like all authoritarian dogmas, was brightly coloured.

Writers were trying to get all the darkness, the social cruelty and suf-
fering behind the numbingly neon-bright phrases – ‘the right to
choose’, ‘freedom under the law’, ‘rolling back the state’. It was as if a
hyperactive demon was flitting about amongst us, seeking with its
touch to turn everything into a banal conformity, a single-value cul-
ture with one creed – ‘by their sale returns ye shall know them’.
(1995, 75)

Yet, writing in 1988 about British theatre in the late 1970s and early
1980s, John Peter, the Sunday Times’s theatre critic wrote: ‘British drama
hasn’t found a language to deal with the 1980s, when the issues are
starker, politics tougher, and the moral choices more extreme’ (in
Peacock 1999, 8). Nevertheless, as late as 1996, John McGrath (1996, vi),
164 The Social Impact of the Arts

in the Preface to his collection of plays entitled Six-Pack, argued for the
necessity of articulating a language and a discourse that could ‘undo’
the damage caused by Thatcherism, and highlighted the central role of
writing for the theatre in this process:

In an age in which the growth of the ‘visual’ languages of film, televi-

sion, advertising, and computer iconography is the excuse for vapid
imprecision: in which political and financial and industrial powers
have one very exact internal language of expansion and profit, but
when called upon to speak to the world hire Public Relations advisers
to teach them to speak a rather different language designed to deceive,
or even to appear to speak while in fact saying nothing; in which, in
short, public language is in danger of losing its ability to tell the truth
of the world in all its complexity, then perhaps at least some writers
should refuse complicity with this failure by declining to indulge in
smart post-modern games-playing, and rather struggle to create recog-
nisable images of a world in transition, and even to dare to ask: transi-
tion to what? To answer we must have words that mean and people
who say what they mean: otherwise the world becomes one big Waco,
with plutonium.
(1996, vi)

In this passage, McGrath is providing much more than a statement of

his aesthetic position, for this is also a firm declaration of the political
function of language and literary and theatrical writing, and a genuine
belief in the power, or even the ethical necessity, of a theatre that can
change society for the better.

* * *

In conclusion, this chapter has presented a diverse range of claims made

for the capacity of the arts to realise a number of different political
ends. We have looked at examples of the abuse of the arts by totalitarian
regimes for the purposes of propaganda and to further their political
aims. On the other hand, we have also looked at the ways in which both
the novel and the theatre have been said to counteract the coercive
nature of political power, by giving voice to marginalised or silenced
perspectives, thus playing an emancipative social role and contributing
to progressive political change.
8
Social Stratification and
Identity Construction

In contemporary times, the most influential theories that have focused

on the ways in which taste-formation and cultural consumption are
linked to social differentiation and stratification have been produced
within the sociological field by Max Weber, George Simmel and, more
recently, Pierre Bourdieu, to name but the most prominent writers.
However, the notion that one of the main functions of art in society is
to operate a distinction between people is much older than standard
sociological theories of ‘taste as refinement’. For example, we looked
earlier at theories suggesting that human creative performance can be
interpreted as a form of sexual display, and therefore, as a crucial ele-
ment in the battle for survival of the human species. In other words,
artists and other creative people are set apart by their own creativity in
a way that puts them at an advantage from an evolutionary point of
view. Ellen Dissanayake reinforces this point when she argues:

the fact that people everywhere value the arts and take the trouble to
express themselves aesthetically suggests to an evolutionary biolo-
gist that there is a reason: doing this, (rather than not doing this)
contributes to human evolutionary fitness. Faced with the over-
whelming evidence that people everywhere make and respond to the
arts, the ethologist would have to presuppose that the arts must have
survival value.
(1998, 61–2)

Lewis-Williams (2002), in his fascinating study of European cave art of

the Upper Palaeolithic, which mixes anthropological and neurological
insights in the attempt to understand for what reasons human beings
living at that time began to create art, comes to a similar conclusion. He

165
166 The Social Impact of the Arts

suggests that ‘cave artists’ were not driven by aesthetics or by a desire for
self-expression. He maintains that ‘the making of art is a social, not a
purely personal, activity. Art serves social purposes, though it is manip-
ulated by individual people in social contexts to achieve certain ends.
Art cannot be understood outside its social context’ (ibid., 44).
So, if at a basic evolutionary level, the arts are involved in distinguish-
ing between humans that are ‘evolutionary fit’ and those who are not,
in the course of time the ways by which the aesthetic sphere has become
connected to exercises in social differentiation and distinction have
become increasingly complex and sophisticated. Saisselin (1970,
214–15), for instance, argues that the philosophes working and writing in
eighteenth-century France were key to contributing to the establish-
ment of an understanding of culture that contained a means of social
differentiation. It was during the Enlightenment that culture and artis-
tic refinement came to be seen as a way for the growing (both in size
and influence) middle classes to distance themselves both from the
loathed nobility and the vulgar lower classes. In Saisselin’s (ibid., 214)
own words, around this time a crucial shift occurs: ‘if an aesthetic built
on beauty may be associated with the nobility, then the aesthetic of the
bourgeoisie is precisely that of distinction. [...] The gentleman, the hero,
the courtier are replaced by the man of distinction’. Charles Frankel
(1969, 8–9) concurs in suggesting that, as a result of the writing of the
philosophes, ‘[a] learned class was emerging in a new role and relation-
ship to the rest of society. [...] Professional intellectuals had, so to speak,
joined the human race’.
Certainly, the Romantic theories of genius, and the grand claims made
for the poets, now seen as being nothing less significant than ‘the unac-
knowledged legislators of the world’ points towards a similar develop-
ment. As will be remembered, the idea of cultural refinement as theorised
in the work of the English Romantics discussed earlier was in close asso-
ciation with claims of social superiority. As Bennett (2006, 128) notes,
for Shelley, ‘poets were engaged in an essentially moral enterprise.
Inevitably, they thus inhabited a morally superior world to those who
went about the more mundane business of making money’. Similarly,
Wordsworth notes that ‘one being is elevated above another’ in direct
proportion to his or her level of aesthetic refinement. It is the business of
poets to raise this level of refinement amongst their people (ibid.).
The long-lasting influence of both Enlightenment and Romantic
views of the social superiority that can be conferred by the cultivation
and refinement of cultural tastes is evident in the observations made by
later intellectuals. D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930), for instance, did not
 Social Stratification and Identity Construction 167

believe that the work of intellectuals bore any relevance whatsoever to

the life of the populace. He did envisage the role of mentor and moral
guide for intellectuals, and novelists in particular, but the object of such
mentoring ought to be, in his view, just a small, refined section of the
community. For the rest – that is, the working classes, or the ‘non-
mental’ section of the population – too much culture might actually be
counter-productive; hence Lawrence’s opposition to mass education
(Johnson 1979, 120). Similarly, T. S. Eliot (1888–1965), in his Notes
Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), puts forward his own proposal
for a class-based elite with a strong cultural component. His view was
based on the assumption that what he referred to as an ‘identity of
belief and aspiration’ could only occur whenever a shared social and
family background could be called upon to bring the members of such
elite together. In his critique of a meritocratic society, Eliot argues:

In an elite composed of individuals who find their way into it solely

for their individual pre-eminence, the differences of background
will be so great, that they will be united only by their common
interests, and separated by everything else. An elite must therefore
be attached to some class, whether higher or lower: but so long as
there are classes at all it is likely to be the dominant class that attracts
this elite to itself.
(1962 edn, 42)

Eliot’s argument would appear to confirm, thus, the point famously

made by Marx and Engels in The German Ideology (1830) that ‘the ideas
of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas’ (in Laing 1978, 7).
Indeed, for Karl Marx (1818–1883), all individual expressions are subor-
dinate to their economic and class relations in society. Therefore, cul-
ture (the ‘super-structure’), reflects class forces and their interplay in
society. Class forces, in turn, derive from the economic system of mate-
rial production (the ‘base’). Inevitably, then, history, as well as culture,
are driven by the struggle between classes and cannot but reflect it
(Swingewood 1998, 3).
Towards the beginning of the twentieth century, however, the
Marxian view that assimilated culture to a reductive model based on
the base-superstructure relation, came under scrutiny. The challenge of
coming up with theoretical frameworks that could deal with the
complexity of modern culture (and society) was taken up by the emerg-
ing discipline of sociology, and by theorists such as Émile Durkheim
(1858–1917), Max Weber (1864–1920) and Georg Simmel (1858–1918).
168 The Social Impact of the Arts

As Simmel eloquently clarified, he saw his work as an attempt to

complement Marx’s historical social theory, by constructing:

a new storey beneath historical materialism such that the explana-

tory value of the incorporation of economic life into the causes of
intellectual culture is preserved, while these economic forms them-
selves are recognised as the result of more profound valuations and
currents of psychological, even metaphysical preconditions.
(in Swingewood 1998, 31).1

Max Weber, in particular, attempted to retrieve the notion of stratifi-

cation from the pre-eminently economic understanding that was pro-
moted by the theories of Karl Marx. For Marx, the concept of social class
was defined predominantly in relation to those who possessed control
over the means of economic reproduction. Weber, instead, suggested a
distinction between the Marxian view of social stratification, and what
he called ‘status honour’, which he saw as grounded in relation to the
means of cultural reproduction (Peterson 1997, 71). An important
distinction put forward by Weber, thus, is the one between ‘class’ and
‘status group’. In Weber’s own words:

With some over-simplification one might thus say that ‘classes’ are
stratified according to their relations to the production and acquisi-
tion of goods; whereas ‘status groups’ are stratified according to the
principles of their consumption of goods as represented by special
‘styles of life’.
(1948 edn, 193; emphasis in the original)

Although the categories of classes and status groups can often overlap,
an important feature of what Weber calls ‘status honor’ is represented by
the fact that ‘above all else a specific style of life can be expected from all
those who wish to belong to the circle’ (ibid., 187; emphasis in the origi-
nal). Another important point Weber raises is the fact that social strati-
fication according to status becomes particularly significant when the
economic conditions of a society are relatively stable. It is in this circum-
stances that the ‘style of life’ assumes a central role among social elites:

The decisive role of a ‘style of life’ in status ‘honor’ means that status
groups are the specific bearers of all ‘conventions’. In whatever way
it may be manifest, all ‘stylization’ of life either originates in status
groups or is at least conserved by them.
 Social Stratification and Identity Construction 169

Weber is voicing here a classical understanding of the mechanisms of

social distinction and taste formation as elaborated within standard
sociological theories of ‘taste as refinement’. These see the formation of
taste as the dominion of the privileged and well-educated elites, and its
diffusion to the rest of society as a ‘top-down’ process: a standard is
elaborated at the top of the social hierarchy and then trickles down-
wards to the rest of the population. In this view, the lower classes are
eager to subscribe to the aesthetic values and the criteria of good taste
elaborated at the top of the social scale, as this would appear to offer
them a way to climb up the social ladder (Meyer 2000).
George Simmel (1858–1918) also placed at the centre of his sociologi-
cal explorations the role of cultural values and norms in socialising and
civilising individuals by attributing them to distinct social groups asso-
ciated with specific social statuses and styles of behaviour (Harrington
2004, 150). The idea of culture as ‘refinement’ is what interested him:

The material products of culture – furniture and cultivated plants,

works of art and machinery, tools and books – in which natural
material is developed into forms which could never have been real-
ised by their own energies, are products of our own desires and emo-
tions, the result of ideas that utilise the available possibilities of
objects. [...] By cultivating objects, that is by increasing their value
beyond the performance of their natural constitution, we cultivate
ourselves; it is the same value-increasing process developing out of us
and returning back to us that moves external nature or our own
nature.
(Simmel 1997 edn, 37)

Simmel was also interested in the mechanisms by which aesthetic

consumption, together with manners, style, fashion and behaviour all
contribute to processes of social differentiation. In particular, writing
about fashion, he argued that following fashion allows the individual a
sense of social distinction, yet, at the same time, also a sense of belong-
ing to a certain social group, since ‘the individual is freed from choos-
ing and appears simply as a creature of the group, as a vessel of social
content’ (Simmel 1997 edn, 188). As Simmel further explains:

Fashion is the imitation of a given pattern and thus satisfies the need
for social adaptation; it leads the individual onto the path that eve-
ryone travels, it furnishes a general condition that resolves the con-
duct of every individual into a mere example. At the same time, and
170 The Social Impact of the Arts

to no less a degree, it satisfies the need for distinction, the tendency

towards differentiation, change and individual contrast.
(1997 edn, 188)

Simmel’s conclusion, then, is inevitably that ‘fashions are always class

fashions’, with the corollary that ‘the fashions of the higher strata of
society distinguish themselves from those of the lower strata, and are
abandoned by the former at the moment when the latter begin to appro-
priate them’ (ibid.). In essence, this represents the very influential ker-
nel of classical sociology’s accounts of taste, whereby the process of taste
formation is envisioned in terms of the sequence ‘refinement-diffusion-
devaluation-further refinement’. Part of this process is the continuous
effort, on the part of the taste-forming social elites, to maintain
their distance from the lower classes through means of ‘aesthetic
outdistancing’ (Meyer 2000, 34).2
Around the same time, Antonio Gramsci, writing from his prison,
was expressing similar views with regards to the power of certain forms
of culture and educational attainment to operate distinctions across a
population along class lines. He particularly attacks the mechanism by
which holding a university degree can become a marker of social status
yet not be a guarantee of a cultured sensibility (but rather an incentive
for an empty intellectualism):

We need to free ourselves from the habit of seeing culture as encyclo-

paedic knowledge, and men as mere receptacles to be stuffed full of
empirical data and a mass of unconnected raw facts, which have to
be filed in the brain as in the columns of a dictionary, enabling their
owner to respond to the various stimuli from the outside world. This
form of culture really is harmful, particularly for the proletariat. It
serves only to create maladjusted people, people who believe they are
superior to the rest of humanity because they have memorised a cer-
tain number of facts and dates and who rattle them off at every
opportunity, so turning them almost in a barrier between them-
selves and others. [...] The young student who knows a little Latin
and history, the young lawyer who has been successful in wringing
a scrap of paper called a degree out of the laziness and lackadaisical
attitude of his professors – they end up seeing themselves as different
from and superior to even the best skilled workman, who fulfils a
precise and indispensable task in life and is a hundred times more
valuable in his activity than they are in theirs.
(in Forgacs 1988, 56–7)
 Social Stratification and Identity Construction 171

Elements of Weber and Simmel’s thought can be traced in the impor-

tant work of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002), whose
investigation of a number of aspects of French life has made him one of
the most highly regarded and influential contemporary sociologists
(Jenkins 2002, ix). The present discussion cannot do full justice to the
complexities of Bourdieu’s study of cultural consumption and produc-
tion in contemporary France and its complex sociological and philo-
sophical implications. For practical reasons, then, we will focus primarily
on Bourdieu’s Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste, first
published in France in 1979, and the most relevant of Bourdieu’s essays
to the present discussion.
As for Weber, and especially Simmel, Distinction focuses on Bourdieu’s
study of the mechanisms by which the individual’s aesthetic disposi-
tion and taste are correlated to both social class and educational
achievement. As Bourdieu himself explains in the Introduction to
Distinction:

Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier. Social subjects, classi-

fied by their classifications, distinguish themselves by the distinc-
tions they make, between the beautiful and the ugly, the distinguished
and the vulgar, in which their position in the objective classification
is expressed or betrayed.
(1984, 6)

In other words, taste and cultural consumption (through the creation of

a superior sphere of higher cultural experiences as in Kant’s high aes-
thetics) represent a way for the educated middle classes to distance
themselves from the lower classes, and to bestow legitimacy on such
differentiations. Bourdieu refers to this process as ‘cultural consecra-
tion’, a mechanism that requires the denigration of those tastes and
aesthetic manifestations that do not belong to the aforementioned
‘high aesthetics’:

The denial of lower, coarse, vulgar, venal, servile – in a word, natural –

enjoyment, which constitutes the sacred sphere of culture, implies an
affirmation of the superiority of those who can be satisfied with the
sublimated, refined, disinterested, gratuitous, distinguished pleasure
for ever closed to the profane. That is why art and cultural consump-
tion are predisposed, consciously and deliberately or not, to fulfil a
social function of legitimating social differences.
(1984, 7)
172 The Social Impact of the Arts

The aesthetic sense is, thus, ‘a distinctive expression of a privileged

position in social space’ (ibid., 56). Like Simmel, Bourdieu too finds that
whilst separating people into different groups, matters of aesthetic taste
also group people together, according to criteria of similar social status
and educational levels:

Like every sort of taste, it [the aesthetic sense] unites and separates.
Being the product of the conditionings associated with a particular
class of conditions of existence, it unites all those who are the prod-
uct of similar conditions while distinguishing them from others.
And it distinguishes in an essential way, since taste is the basis of all
that one has – people and things – and all that one is for others,
whereby one classifies oneself and is classified by others.
(1984, 56)

This aesthetic disposition finds expression in the middle classes’ pro-

pensity for the appreciation of the fine arts, for the attendance at muse-
ums and theatres, and for other forms of artistic engagement with high
arts facilities, and is a reflection of the stock ‘cultural capital’ that the
dominant class can harness for the reproduction and preservation of its
status (Lane 2000, 52).3
Interestingly, the findings of a research project jointly carried out by
the Open University and Manchester University, entitled ‘Cultural
Capital and Social Exclusion’, would appear to show a similarity between
the conclusions reached by Bourdieu on the basis of his fieldwork in
France in the 1960s and 1970s, and those reached by British scholars in
the twenty-first century. As Tony Bennett (2005) – one of the principal
researchers on this project – explains, a major component of the project
was an extensive survey of people’s cultural activities and preferences,
tastes and their relation to class background, educational attainments,
ethnicity, gender, and a number of further social indicators. Bourdieu
himself would not have been surprised to hear that a positive correlation
was found between high rates of participation in cultural activities and
professional (rather than manual) occupations. Especially when partici-
pation in the ‘high’ arts is concerned (visits to museums and galleries,
theatres and concert halls), data showed that having a university degree
or not is the clearest indicator of cultural preferences and attendance
behaviour. This leads Bennett (ibid., 3–4) to conclude that ‘well-educated
middle-class professionals and managers are the most likely to be heav-
ily involved in those parts of the cultural sector that are dependent on
public funding whereas less well educated unskilled and semi-skilled
 Social Stratification and Identity Construction 173

workers are more exclusively involved in the commercial cultural sector’.

Hence, it would appear that not only is cultural consumption still a force
for social distinction in today’s society, but that, to a certain extent, the
‘high’/’low’ culture divide is also part of the mechanism of taste forma-
tion and refinement that reflects social and educational divisions.
It is important to observe that cultural participation does not simply
operate a distinction between individuals that either have or do not
have certain levels of cultural capital. Social stratification through
culture, in fact, operates in much subtler ways, and allows all manner
of distinctions to be made even amongst the ‘cultured’. As the
American scholar William Ian Miller (2003) writes, in a book entitled
Faking It, aesthetic experiences often represent occasions for painful
self-awareness, and force us to face up to our own deep-seated social
insecurities. Comparing the contemplation of a painting to the con-
templation of the beautiful in nature, Miller maintains:

With art we have the added anxiety as to whether we are enjoying it

properly and whether we can convince others we enjoyed it properly
without seeming either too simple or sillily pretentious.
(2003, 158)

At the root of what Miller (ibid., 160) defines as ‘the obligatoriness of

being properly appreciative of those things we are supposed to appreci-
ate’ is ultimately one’s fear of showing oneself up in front of one’s peers
with whom the aesthetic experience is often shared, especially in a
museum setting:

You cannot help but be aware of their reaction, not just to the object of
appreciation but also to your watching of it. They will be judging, you
feel, whether you are being a proper appreciator. Your reputation – for
having a soul, for having taste, for being a worthy object of love, and
for not being either a pompous prig or a hopeless philistine – is in some
way engaged. There is competition even in the watching of a sunset as
to who is feeling the most, let alone a painting, where the competitive-
ness is more clearly the case. True, the others may not be judging you,
but you suspect they are, because you are certainly judging them and
comparing their responses with yours. It is a rare day that a trip to the
art museum doesn’t leave you feeling something of a moral failure for
not liking Picasso as much as you thought you should have or as much
as the others faking liking him are liking him.
(2003, 160)
174 The Social Impact of the Arts

Hence, the anxious self-awareness induced by the contemplation of art

in a public environment such as the museum:

How long are you obliged to pay homage, to stay looking at the
Vermeer? There is the niggling worry about when we can declare
ourselves properly released from having to attend to it. The painting
stubbornly stays there, available to be admired or studied until the
museums closes or until your companion urges you to move on in no
uncertain terms. When can you say, ‘OK enough’ and feel you have
paid proper homage?
(2003, 161)

Needless to say, a lot rests, in terms of social and cultural distinction,

upon our capacity to react in the ‘correct’ manner to the aesthetic
encounter. For what Miller is wittingly exposing here is, in fact, the
notion, first expounded by Bourdieu in his Distinction, of the ideologi-
cal function of cultural activity, and the process by which ‘the defini-
tion of cultural space and the positioning of subjects within it evince
relationships of power’ (Palumbo-Liu 1997, 5).
Moreover, as William Ray (2001) observes in his The Logic of Culture,
whilst it divides us into relatively homogenous groups, culture also
allows us a certain degree of individualisation. Indeed, it is in the nature
of the ‘logic of culture’ to contribute to the shaping of individual iden-
tity through the process of subscription to a set of accepted cultural
norms ratified by a particular society. Yet, at the same time, one also has
the possibility of attempting to find a way of expressing one’s individu-
ality by criticising and bending those very accepted cultural norms:

[...] the cultural way of thinking imagines the social in terms of a

permanent dialectic between autonomy and community, the coher-
ence of the group and the self-realization of its members. And the
ethic inscribed in this way of thinking makes the subject responsible
for overcoming this tension.
(Ray 2001, 8)

Consequently, ‘the identity one forges for oneself is the product of indi-
vidual agency and energy, but it has meaning within the community by
virtue of being constituted according to the rules of that community’
(ibid., 62). For Ray, the notion of ‘self-selection’ is central to the ideology
of culture as it has developed in the modern era. In this view, the ethic
of culture entails a number of mechanisms through which every citizen
 Social Stratification and Identity Construction 175

is led to express and disclose his or her preferences and intellectual

capabilities. As a result, ‘one assumes one’s place in society with a sense
of self-determination, since it comes as a result of pursuing one’s own
interests’ (Ray 2001, 76–8). In other words, by enlisting individuals in
the process of self-selection that ultimately results in social stratifica-
tion, the logic of culture places the responsibility for social hierarchy on
the individual, through the deployment of a double rhetoric, which
simultaneously encourages conformity and individuation.

* * *

In this chapter, we have reviewed theories that assert that aesthetic

preferences and patterns of cultural participation operate social distinc-
tions amongst people. Writers discussing the powers of the arts to dis-
tinguish people along educational and class lines can be found within
a disparate range of disciplines, from ethology and ethnology to the
social sciences. However, the discussion has shown that the theories
developed within the field of sociology by Weber and Simmel at the
turn of the twentieth century, and later developed by Bourdieu, have
proved most influential, so that their elaboration of the notion of ‘taste
as refinement’ is a useful paradigm for understanding the claim that
the arts can be agents of social stratification.
9
Autonomy of the Arts and
Rejection of Instrumentality

As was noted earlier, the claims discussed so far for the ways in which
the arts can affect individuals and society as a whole have all repre-
sented different variants of what Abrams (1953, 15) defined as a ‘prag-
matic’ theory of arts. In other words, the claims and the positions
reviewed so far with regards to the ‘positive’ tradition, all share a funda-
mental belief that the arts have a function to fulfil in society (though
ideas of what precisely such function ought to be, as we have seen, vary
greatly). A corollary of such views of art is that, whilst aesthetic criteria
remain central in the judgement of works of art, nonetheless, the extent
to which the artwork in question is seen to be successful in fulfilling
the function attributed to it is also an important indicator of its value.
The present category, then, deals with instances of the contrary view,
which posits that – whilst the arts might well have educational, cogni-
tive, humanising or other powers – the value and importance of the
work of art reside firmly in the aesthetic sphere.
This dichotomy between an ethical criticism of art (where moral con-
siderations are brought to bear on the aesthetic judgement of the work
of art) and the view that rejects the legitimacy of moral considerations1
in discussions of art is central to contemporary aesthetic debates. The
two sides of the debate are respectively referred to as ‘moralism’ and
‘autonomism’ (Carroll 1996 and 2000). Noël Carroll, who is generally
credited with coining these labels, defines ‘autonomism’ thus:

[The autonomism argument] concludes that art and ethics are auton-
omous realms of value and, thus, criteria from the ethical realm
should not be imported to evaluate the aesthetic realm. Artworks, it
is said, are valuable for their own sake, not because of their service to
ulterior purposes, such as moral enlightenment or improvement.

176
 Autonomy of the Arts/Rejection of Instrumentality 177

The epitome of this sentiment can be found in Oscar Wilde’s slogan:

‘There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are
well written or badly written. That is all.’ This viewpoint is some-
times called ‘aestheticism.’2
(2000, 351)

It is to the exploration of the historical development of ‘the autonomism

argument’ that this chapter is devoted.
Ideas of the autonomy of the aesthetic sphere are often referred to,
especially in contemporary public debates around the arts, as ‘art for art’s
sake’. The theoretical reference for the label, as we will see, is represented
mainly by theories of art developed between the eighteenth and the
nineteenth centuries in France and England, and originating, ultimately,
from a misunderstanding and distortion of Kantian thought. However,
even before the eighteenth century, various attempts had already been
made to carve out a certain degree of autonomy for the aesthetic sphere.
As we have seen, in classical antiquity, the arts, and particularly poetry
and the theatre, were perceived as a moral guide and the repository of the
deeply held beliefs and values of a society. As Albert L. Guérand (1936, 34)
puts it ‘[u]p to the end of the Classical Age, Art for Art’s Sake may have
been practiced; it never was openly confessed, and still less professed’.
This status quo remained fundamentally unchallenged in the Early
Christian times, when, as we have seen, poetry, literature and the arts
were still seen as subordinate to the expression of Christian values, and
the articulation of the newly developed Christian doctrine. In his his-
torical study of Italian literature, for instance, Petronio (1991, 34) argues
that all the literature produced in Italy between the tenth and thirteenth
century was of a religious nature. Throughout the Early Christian period
and much of the Middle Ages, indeed, it was not just artistic production,
but all intellectual work that was subordinated to the requirements of
religion, including philosophical investigations. As St. Thomas Aquinas
famously put it, ‘philosophia ancilla theologiae est’ (philosophy is the
handmaid of theology). Protestantism shared similar views, and Calvin
repeatedly argued against any notion of art for art’s sake on the grounds
that any artistic expression that exists purely for man’s enjoyment is false
art, inspired by the devil and thus sinful (Spelman 1948, 247).
As was suggested earlier, it was during the Renaissance that Italian
literary critics first attempted to ease the yoke of religion over poetic
inspiration. Theories of the allegorical interpretation of classical poetry,
and the defence of the moral nature of poetry were indeed attempts to
free poetical works from the suspicion that the Fathers of the Church
178 The Social Impact of the Arts

had reserved for them. The notion, put forward by the likes of Leonardo
Bruni and Giambattista Guarino in the late sixteenth century, that a
poet should be judged on the ground of his success as an artist rather
than a moralist, represents the first instance of an attempt to defend
a predominantly aesthetic appreciation of literature. Nevertheless,
Spingarn (1908, 10) observes that whilst such ideas where not uncom-
mon at that time, they nevertheless expressed isolated views that did
not coalesce into a fully fledged doctrine coherently articulated within
an aesthetic theory of poetry.

The significance of Kant

A significant moment in the trajectory towards a definition of an

autonomous sphere for the arts is represented by Kantian philosophy.
Bell-Villada (1996, 20) goes as far as maintaining that ‘the Critique of
Judgement eventually came to be viewed as the sourcebook for Art for
Art’s Sake’, though he also points out how this was often through a mis-
understanding of, or lack of direct contact with, Kant’s work. It is indeed
with Kant that art’s independence is first theorised. Earlier parts of this
book have shown that, for Kant, the aesthetic sphere has both a cogni-
tive and a moral dimension, despite not being able to transmit universal
knowledge or values. However, Kant also makes it clear that art is no
longer to be seen as the handmaiden of ethics. As a matter of fact, in
Section 16 of the Critique of Judgement, Kant (1987 edn, 78) explicitly
maintains that ‘neither does perfection gain by beauty, nor beauty by
perfection’. Fine art, for Kant, is ‘a way of presenting that is purposive on
its own and that furthers, even though without a purpose, the culture of
our mental powers to [facilitate] social communication’ (ibid.).3 Hence,
by defining fine art as ‘purposiveness without a purpose’, Kant asserts
that works of arts have no purpose outside of themselves, they serve no
ends whatever and are thus free from any finality or function.
Hammermeister summarises Kant’s position thus:

One reason that we can never attribute an end to a beautiful object is

that every definition of an end for Kant relies on some idea of perfec-
tion, namely, the ultimate purpose of an object. Since beauty [...] can
never be conceptualised, no beautiful objects can ever be thought to
have a purpose. And yet when we encounter it, it seems that it has
been designed as if to fulfill a very particular function, since there is
nothing arbitrary about it. One way to solve this seeming contradic-
tion is to think of it as saying that beauty does of course incite pleasure
 Autonomy of the Arts/Rejection of Instrumentality 179

in us and that this is very well a purpose. And yet the beautiful object
does not exist on behalf of its viewer; it is truly independent.
(2002, 32)

An anticipation of this Kantian idea of the independence of art was

already to be found in the writing of Karl Philip Moritz (1724–1804),
who, writing in 1785 (that is, about five years before Kant penned the
passages quoted above), asserted:

But what brings us pleasure without actually being useful we call

beautiful. [...] I have to take pleasure in a beautiful object purely for its
own sake; to this end the lack of an exterior purpose must be replaced
by an inner purpose; the object must be something perfect in itself.
(in Hammermeister 2002, 29)

Another crucial articulation of the autonomy of art was put forward by

an illustrious contemporary of Moritz: Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805).
In his On The Aesthetic Education of Man, Schiller (1794) forcefully
defends the idea of the autonomy of art from moral or didactic
functions. The idea of a moral or educational function of art he finds,
indeed, ‘self-contradictory’, for – as Schiller argues in the twenty-sec-
ond letter – ‘nothing is more at variance with the concept of beauty
than it should have a tendentious effect upon the character’ (in Bell-
Villada 1996, 27). Schiller expands on the theme of the ‘uselessness’ of
art and beauty in the twenty-first letter, where he explains how help-
less the arts are in promoting the ethical or intellectual ‘betterment’ of
man; all responsibility for what men make of themselves rests, indeed,
firmly upon their own shoulders:

beauty produces no particular result whatsoever, neither for the

understanding nor for the will. It accomplishes no particular pur-
pose, neither intellectual nor moral; it discovers no individual truth,
helps us to perform no individual duty and is, in short, as unfitted to
provide a firm basis for character as to enlighten the understanding.
By means of aesthetic culture, therefore, the personal worth of a
man, or his dignity, inasmuch as this can depend solely upon him-
self, remains completely indeterminate; and nothing more is achieved
by it than that he is henceforth enabled by the grace of Nature to
make of himself what he will – that the freedom to be what he ought
to be is completely restored to him.
(Schiller 1967 edn, 147)
180 The Social Impact of the Arts

Schelling’s (1775–1854) The System of Transcendental Idealism, published

in 1800, also argued in favour of the autonomy of art from any sort of
use value, whether theoretical or practical. Art, he argued, has no end
outside itself, for its ‘holiness and purity’ can only be preserved if art is
an end in itself (Hammermeister 2002, 74). Schelling’s position, thus,
further demonstrates how, between the eighteenth and nineteenth cen-
turies, a body of thinking was being elaborated in Germany that focused
on the independence of the aesthetic sphere from moral and didactic
considerations.
It is primarily through Kant and his influence (often mixed with mis-
understandings), however, that the idea of the independence of art and
the aesthetic sphere from moral and epistemological preoccupations
will evolve into theories of l’art pour l’art that are still invoked today
with a mix of frustration and nostalgia by critics of current ‘instrumen-
tal’ cultural policies.4 Furthermore, theories of ‘art for art’s sake’, that
were first developed when the Kantian ideas illustrated above were
imported into France and England, were also key in the later develop-
ment of the Aesthetic movement in the nineteenth century.
The attempt to trace the intellectual origins of the set of beliefs that
are referred to by the label of ‘art for art’s sake’ (for a long time referred
to by the French version of l’art pour l’art) and the first examples of the
usage of the label itself have kept art historians and literary critics
engaged in lively debates for most of the nineteenth and twentieth cen-
turies. At the turn of the century and until the 1920s, it was customary
to attribute the origin of the theory to the French, although later schol-
ars progressively brought to light the trajectory of the main ideas of the
movement, from their German origin (in Kantian thought and post-
Kantian German Idealism), through English mediation of the notions,
to their French re-elaborations in the guise of the notion of l’art pour
l’art.5 The identification of the first appearance, in print, of the term ‘art
for art’s sake’ has not been straightforward either, with candidates for
the title of ‘inventor’ of the phrase ranging from the French philosophy
lecturer Victor Cousin, to Théophile Gautier, Benjamin Constant, Victor
Hugo or William Thackeray (Egan 1921; Singer 1954). Whilst these
issues are beyond the concerns of this book, they certainly testify to the
complexity of the issues under discussion here, and the extent to which,
in the eighteenth century, ideas and intellectual elaborations were
already circulating and being exchanged across Europe, in a process of
continuous cross-fertilisation.
Today scholars generally agree that the central tenets of the art for
art’s sake theory can be traced back to Kant’s philosophy as interpreted
 Autonomy of the Arts/Rejection of Instrumentality 181

and diffused (and often misinterpreted) in England and France by a

number of key personalities who were fascinated by the development of
idealist philosophy taking place in Germany around the first half of the
eighteenth century. A whole new reading of Kantian aesthetics resulted
from the extrapolation of certain terms from Kant’s Critique of Judgement
and their incorporation in a new guise which appeared only superfi-
cially Kantian. Some key Kantian words that seemed to particularly cap-
ture the imagination were ‘aesthetics’, ‘disinterested’, ‘free’ and ‘pure’.
As Wilcox (1953, 362) observes, to these one might add ‘art’, ‘beauty’,
‘taste’, ‘form’ and ‘sublime’, which were part of the already established
philosophical vocabulary of the time. In Kant, these concepts appeared
to have acquired new meanings, and it is indeed through the interpreta-
tion (and often the misinterpretation) of these Kantian notions from
which the kernel of the new theory originates. As Wilcox further
explains: ‘There you have the rubric of l’art pour l’art, each the index of
a large area of meaning but far from the adequate expression of that
meaning. Almost any combination will recall Kant. And the greatest of
these is aesthetic’ (ibid.).6
In particular, Madame de Staël (1766–1817), who spent some time in
Weimar in the winter of 1803–4 together with Benjamin Constant,
played a key role in this dubious popularisation of Kant’s aesthetic ideas
by giving a rather imprecise account of them in her book De l’Allemagne
(1810). This is how de Staël presented Kant’s idea of disinterestedness:

In separating the beautiful and the useful, Kant proves clearly that it
is not at all in the nature of the fine arts to give lessons. No doubt
everything beautiful ought to give rise to generous feelings and these
feelings stimulate virtue; but as soon as one undertakes to place a
moral precept in evidence, the free impression that the masterpieces
of art produce is necessarily destroyed, for the purpose, whatever it
may be, when it is known restricts and hinders the imagination.
(in Wilcox 1953, 364–5)

As was noted earlier, whilst Kant affirmed the ‘uselessness’ of art and
the beautiful, or – in other words – that art is to be valued beyond nar-
rowly conceived notions of its practical utility, he was also clear about
the indissoluble link between the beautiful and the moral. In the pas-
sage quoted above, however, Mme de Staël seems to equate the separa-
tion between the beautiful and the useful with a separation between
the beautiful and the moral, thus presenting a distorted view of Kant’s
original position.
182 The Social Impact of the Arts

Nineteenth-century aestheticism

What this passage indeed highlights is the way in which Madame de

Staël7 reinterpreted Kant’s work, thus elaborating one of the central ten-
ets of the art for art’s sake doctrine: the separation of art from morality
and from any didactic function. In nineteenth-century aestheticism this
principle of the separation between the aesthetic and the moral sphere
will be further emphasised, and art and morality came to be viewed not
just as separate, but as incompatible. As Oscar Wilde put it, ‘no artist has
ethical sympathies’ (in Wilcox 1953, 350), and Nietzsche declared that
‘the struggle against a purpose in art is always a struggle against the
moral tendency in art – against its subordination to morality. Art for
art’s sake means, Let morality go to the Devil’ (in Kieran 2005, 166–7).
An important component of nineteenth-century aestheticism was
also the rejection of the precepts of Christian morality and conse-
quently the refusal to accept that art and poetry ought to be the hand-
maidens of theology. In its place, the pursuit of beauty for its own sake
became the supreme end of the artist’s life. As the preface to Théophile
Gautier’s novel Mademoiselle de Maupin (published in 1835) declares:

One of the most ridiculous things in the glorious epoch in which we

have the good fortune to be alive is undoubtedly the rehabilitation
of virtue. [...] The fashion to-day is to be virtuous and Christian.
(in Grieve 1999, 17)

The rejection of Christian morality is therefore the necessary prerequi-

site for the substitutive cult of beauty. As Gautier further explains:

Nothing is really beautiful unless it is useless; everything which is

useful is ugly, for it expresses some need and the needs of man are
ignoble and disgusting, like his poor feeble nature. [...] Instead of
some useful, everyday pot, I prefer a Chinese pot which is sprinkled
with mandarins and dragons, a pot which is no use to me at
all. [...] I should very happily renounce my rights as a Frenchman and
as a citizen to see an authentic picture by Raphael, or a beautiful
woman naked [...] for pleasure seems to me the goal of life and the
only worthwhile thing in the world.
(in Grieve 1999, 17)

It is important to note the links between the popularity gained by

ideas of art for art’s sake and the social and economic developments of
 Autonomy of the Arts/Rejection of Instrumentality 183

the nineteenth century. As was already observed in the preceding

discussion of Romantic theories of art, the doctrine of art for art’s sake
needs to be seen against the backdrop of the profound changes in soci-
ety brought about by the process of industrialisation, that had, by the
early 1830s (when notions of l’art pour l’art begin to circulate with sig-
nificant frequency and intensity), gained momentum. Ideas of the
bohemian or aloof artist that come to be crystallised around this time,
are borne out of the painful awareness of the tensions – if not open
conflict – of the imperatives of aesthetic production, and the require-
ments of a prospering cultural market based on the fundamental prin-
ciple of providing the public with what it wants (no matter how crude
or unoriginal that demand might be). In response to such develop-
ments, artists – especially in France and England – adopted what
Bell-Villada (1996, 50) defines as a ‘militantly defensive posture,
expressed via ideals that provided solace for their resentment and a
sense of superiority in their craft’.
In other words, artists that espoused theories of art for art’s sake
turned their marginal position in the current art and literary markets
into a badge of honour, whereby the unmarketability and ‘uselessness’
(to practical ends) of their art became not only their ‘trademark’, but an
aesthetic, moral and political asset and the foundation for their higher
ethical ground. The mission of ‘art for art’s sake’, and of Aestheticism in
general, can thus be seen as part of a quest for a set of values alternative
to the ones underscored by the functioning of the market and the flour-
ishing capitalist system. Equating art to life was one of the avenues
open to artists around this time. As Chai (1990, ix) confirms, ‘[a]t the
heart of the Aesthetic movement is a desire to redefine the relation of
art to life, to impart life itself to the form of a work of art and thereby
raise it to a higher level of existence’.
Just as the moral function of the arts was rejected by many artists and
intellectuals, so also was the idea contested that art should be involved
in politics. For example, English dramatist and writer Richard
Cumberland (1732–1811) elaborates in his Henry (1795) on what he per-
ceives his job as a writer to be, and this very clearly does not encompass
any attempt to shape or influence contemporary politics:

All that I am bound to do as a story-maker is to make a story; I am not

bound to reform the constitution of my country in the same breath,
nor even (Heaven be thanked!) to overturn it, though that might be
the easier task of the two, or, more properly speaking, one and the
same thing in its consequences. Nature is my guide; man’s nature, not
184 The Social Impact of the Arts

his natural rights: the one ushers me by the straight avenue to the
human heart, the other bewilders me in a maze of metaphysics.
(in Allott 1959, 92)

A comparable view was echoed in nineteenth-century France by the

writer Stendhal (1783–1842), whose novel La Chartreuse de Parme (1839)
contains a passage that illuminates, without doubts, his views on these
matters; despite the obvious interest that it can provoke in readers, the
interference of political views in literature is nevertheless frowned upon:

Politics in a work of literature are like a pistol-shot in the middle of a

concert, something loud and vulgar and yet a thing to which it is not
possible to refuse one’s attention.
(in Allott 1959, 92)

Around the same time, Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), discussing Fielding
in his Lives of the Novelists (1827), points out that ‘[t]he professed moral
of a piece is usually what the reader is least interested in’ (in Allott 1959,
92). In a similar vein, Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), in a letter to George
Sand dated 10 August 1868, wrote:

I do not recognise my right to accuse anyone. I don’t even think that

the novelist should express his own opinion of the things of this
world. He may communicate it, but I don’t want him to state it. (This
is part of my own aesthetic doctrine.) And so I limit myself to reveal-
ing things as they appear to me, and to explaining that which seems
to me to be the truth. Never mind the consequences!8
(in Allott 1959, 94–5)

Twentieth-century elaborations

Ideas of the autonomy and ‘uselessness’ of art remained central to

debates over the nature and role of the arts within society in twentieth-
century England. In his Civilization, first published in 1928, Clive Bell
maintains:

He who possesses a sense of values cannot be a Philistine; he will

value art and thought and knowledge for their own sakes, not for
their possible utility. When I say for their own sakes, I mean, of
course, as direct means to good states of mind which alone are good
 Autonomy of the Arts/Rejection of Instrumentality 185

as ends. No one now imagines that a work of art lying on an

uninhabited island has absolute value, or doubts that its potential
values lies in the fact that it can at any moment become a means to
a state of mind of superlative excellence. Works of art being direct
means to aesthetic ecstasy are direct means to good.
(1938 edn, 61)

In 1951, however, the popularity of theories of art for art’s sake

appeared to be losing ground, or – at least – so thought E. M. Forster. In
the opening of one of the essays included in his Two Cheers for Democracy
and actually entitled ‘Art for Art’s Sake’, he declares: ‘I believe in art for
art’s sake. It is an unfashionable belief, and some of my statements must
be of the nature of an apology.’ He further elaborates his ideas of what
art for art’s sake means to him thus:

A work of art, we are all agreed, is a unique product. But why? It is

unique not because it is clever or noble or beautiful or enlightened or
original or sincere or idealistic or useful or educational – it may
embody any of these qualities – but because it is the only material
object in the universe which may possess internal harmony. [...] The
work of art stands up by itself, and nothing else does.
(1951, 99)

As was the case for the Aesthetic movement of the preceding century,
Forster’s declaration of faith in the art for art’s sake principle needs to
be understood in the broader context of coeval cultural, economic and
scientific developments. Indeed, scepticism towards the widely held
belief in the powers of science to bring order to the world is an impor-
tant component of the reasoning behind the proclamation of the values
of art for art’s sake that Forster makes in the passage above. In the same
essay, he (ibid., 97) points out the dominance that he saw in his time of
preoccupations with the question of order: ‘In the world of daily life,
the world which we perforce inhabit, there is much talk about order,
particularly from statesmen and politicians.’ Science, which many held
as the prime source of order in the world, had shown its limitations.
Writing in the early 1950s, the memories of two world wars still fresh in
his mind, Forster observes: ‘she [science] gave us the internal combus-
tion engine, and before we had digested and assimilated it with terrible
pains into our social system, she harnessed the atom, and destroyed any
new order that seemed to be evolving’. Hence his conclusion, in the
closing lines of the essay: ‘Works of art, in my opinion, are the only
186 The Social Impact of the Arts

objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is

why, though I don’t believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for
Art’s Sake.’
Forster, indeed, is representative of the twentieth-century versions of
art for art’s sake theories and contemporary elaborations of the impor-
tance of protecting the autonomy of art from encroachments (be they
moral, epistemological, political, etc.). Whilst rejecting the most extreme
forms of dissociation between art and morality, this position, however,
highlights the view that the value of art does not lie in the connection
of the aesthetic sphere with non-aesthetic and utilitarian preoccupa-
tions. Other interesting articulations of this position can be found, for
instance, in the writing of Bertolt Brecht. In positing pleasure-giving as
the central concern and function of theatre, he clearly suggests this as
necessary to the theatre’s ethical and educational functions:

From the first it has been theatre’s business to entertain people, as it

also has of all the other arts. [...] We should not by any means be giv-
ing it a higher status if we were to turn it e.g. into a purveyor of
morality; it would on the contrary run the risk of being debased, and
this would occur at once if it failed to make its moral lesson enjoya-
ble, and enjoyable to senses at that: a principle, admittedly, by which
morality can only gain. Not even instruction can be demanded of it:
at any rate, no more utilitarian lesson than how to move pleasurably,
whether in the physical or in the spiritual sphere. The theatre must
in fact remain something entirely superfluous, though this indeed
means that it is the superfluous for which we live. Nothing needs less
justification than pleasure.
(1964 edn, 180–1)

Whilst aware of the educational and political significance of theatre,

Brecht makes it clear that art and knowledge are two equally deserving
yet completely distinct fields of human activity, so that:

Whatever knowledge may be contained in a poetic work, it must be

completely converted into poetry. In its transmuted form, it gives the
same type of satisfaction as any poetic work.
(1961, 22–39)

In his Social purpose and the integrity of the artist (1961) Stephen Spender
(1909–1995) also rejects the view of art as a tool for social or political
transformation, thus affirming the right of the artist to express his or
 Autonomy of the Arts/Rejection of Instrumentality 187

her values and vision, irrespective of any political implications that

they might have:

Of course liberal humanists are not dictators, but for just this reason
they should realize the danger implicit in attempts to persuade artists
to realize in their work a directing social idea, however justified and
urgent it may seem. There is no modern art expressing a social pur-
pose. [...] The history of the development of art is, largely, the history
of the attempts of the artist to create his own vision with or without
the approval of society.
(1961, 225)

The rejection of narrowly utilitarian views of the function of the arts in

society is indeed at the heart of the intellectual position explored in
this chapter. As the aesthete and museum curator John Pope-Hennessy
(1913–1994) declares:

My life has been devoted to studying works of art and putting them to
use. To the material well-being of the world neither activity is of much
consequence; it does not make the poor less poor, it does not sustain
the hungry, it does not diminish suffering or redress injustice.
(in Carrier 1997, 6)

Analogous arguments have been developed, on the opposite side of

the Atlantic by the literary scholar and critic Harold Bloom, whose The
Western Canon forcefully rejects the idea that the masterpieces of the
Western literary canon should be looked up to as a source of moral
ennoblement and refinement since reading is, as a matter of fact, an
activity that has very little to do with the sphere of the social:

Scholars who urge us to find the source of our morality and our
politics in Plato, or in Isaiah, are out of touch with the reality in
which we live. If we read the Western Canon in order to form our
social, political or personal moral values, I firmly believe we will
become monsters of selfishness and exploitation. To read in the serv-
ice of any ideology is not, in my judgement, to read at all. The recep-
tion of aesthetic powers enables us to learn how to talk to ourselves
and how to endure ourselves. The true use of Shakespeare or of
Cervantes, of Homer or of Dante, of Chaucer or of Rabelais, is to aug-
ment one’s own growing inner self. Reading deeply in the Canon
will not make one a better or a worse person, a more useful or a more
188 The Social Impact of the Arts

harmful citizen. The mind’s dialogue with itself is not primarily a

social reality. All that the Western Canon can bring one is the proper
use of one’s own solitude, that solitude whose final form is one’s
confrontation with one’s own mortality.
(1994, 28)

Similarly, American theatre director David Mamet in the already

mentioned essay Three Uses of the Knife also takes care to underline the
uselessness of a conception of the arts as a tool for social action or
change:

Drama doesn’t need to affect people’s behavior. There’s a great and

very, very effective tool that changes people’s attitudes and makes
them see the world in a new way. It’s called a gun.
(1998, 25)

Mamet, furthermore notes that the idea of the arts as a way to modify
behaviour is not merely misguided, but ethically suspect; it places the
artist in a position of moral superiority, which Mamet does not consider
justifiable. He articulates these concerns compellingly:

Now I’ve been working with audiences thirty years or more, in dif-
ferent venues. And I’ve never met an audience that wasn’t collec-
tively smarter than I am, and didn’t beat me to the punch every
time. These people have been paying my rent, all my life. And I
don’t consider myself superior to them and have no desire to change
them. Why should I, and how could I? I’m no different than they
are. I don’t know anything they don’t know. An audience (a popu-
lace) can be coerced, by a lie, a bribe (a gun); and it can be instructed/
preached at. By anyone with a soapbox and a lack of respect. But in
all the above this audience is being abused. They are not being
‘changed’, they are being forced. Dramatists who aim to change the
world assume a moral superiority to the audience and allow the
audience to assume a moral superiority to those people in the play
who don’t accept the views of the hero. It’s not the dramatist’s job
to bring about social change. There are great men and great women
who effect social change. They do so through costly demonstrations
of personal courage – they risk getting their heads beat in during the
march on Montgomery. Or chain themselves to a pillar. Or stand up
to ridicule or scorn. They put their lives on the line, and that can
inspire heroism in others. But the purpose of art is not to change but
 Autonomy of the Arts/Rejection of Instrumentality 189

to delight. I don’t think its purpose is to enlighten us. I don’t think

it’s to change us. I don’t think it’s to teach us. The purpose of art is
to delight us: certain men and women (no smarter than you or I)
whose art can delight us have been given dispensation from going
out and fetching water and carrying wood. It’s no more elaborate
than that.
(1998, 26–7)

Mamet is raising here a number of crucial issues that are central to a

discussion of the function of the arts and artists in society. Whilst a
detailed discussion of the full implications of these issues goes beyond
what it is possible to explore here, it is worth highlighting their relation
to contemporary debates over the extent to which the arts are valuable
to a society on the grounds of their ‘usefulness’, either to the economy
or as a form of social work. The link between ideas of the autonomous
value of the arts and the constrictions of present-day cultural policy, for
instance, have been extensively discussed by John Tusa, Managing
Director of one of Britain’s flagship cultural organisations, The Barbican
in London. Over the years, Tusa has been waging a personal battle
(though by no means alone) against the need for the arts to be ‘relevant’
to the public and against pressures from government and funding bod-
ies to ensure the arts’ ‘utility and immediate comprehensibility to the
broad public’ (Tusa 2000, 29). Tusa’s own diagnosis of the present
malaise of the arts world reads thus:

[...] we have lost a vocabulary and an area of permitted public

discourse where values are valued rather than costed; where inspi-
ration is regarded as heaven-sent rather than an unacceptable risk.
Instead, we have a materialistic debate where the immaterial is dis-
missed as pretentious rather than welcomed as essential; where art
for art’s sake is pigeon-holed as a personal obsession rather than
recognised as a vital social ingredient; where the public good is
dismissed as a chimera so long as it cannot be quantified on a
balance sheet.
(2000, 29–30)

Tusa’s argument, and the many other complaints over the extent to
which arts organisations and funding bodies are ‘consumed by the
political’ (Brighton, 2006), are part and parcel of the dichotomy between
the ‘instrumental’ and the ‘intrinsic’ value of the arts, which has become
such a central feature of current public debates around the functions of
190 The Social Impact of the Arts

the arts in society. However, as we observe in our concluding chapter,

and, as we hope this book has made clear, ‘insrumentalism’ should not
just be seen as a recent and unwelcome encroachment of politics in the
aesthetic sphere. It should, perhaps, be seen more as a mode of under-
standing, which, far from being peripheral, has actually been central to
the long, intellectual tradition that we have traced here.
Conclusion

As already explained in the introduction, the review of the writings of

philosophers, artists, novelists and dramatists that our taxonomy of
claims is based on aims at being representative rather than exhaustive.
In view of the broad time-span involved, our approach to texts neces-
sarily had to be selective. Other authors could have been considered,
and readers of this book could no doubt have come up with omissions,
under-representations, or suggestions of classifying intellectuals and
ideas in different ways. To a certain extent, this is in the nature of the
study itself, as – on the one hand – exhaustiveness is beyond reach and,
on the other, the interpretation of ideas produced centuries ago has
been, in many cases, the object of controversy and debate (for instance,
Aristotle’s notion of dramatic catharsis, or the post-colonial critique of
nineteenth-century ideas of the civilising nature of Western culture).
Nevertheless, we would argue that there are a number of interesting
conclusions that can be drawn from the classification of arguments
made here, which have implications for contemporary debates about
the value of the arts in modern societies.
Firstly, the historical review presented indicates that the ‘negative
tradition’ – that is, the view persisting over time that the arts have a
negative influence on individuals and society as a whole – resounds as
strongly as the ‘positive tradition’, which maintains that the arts are
‘good for you’ and which can be seen as predominant in today’s debates
over cultural and educational policy. As a matter of fact, one could even
argue that the ‘negative’ tradition, despite being largely ignored in these
debates, has, historically, resounded more strongly. Indeed, as has been
shown, many of the arguments on the cathartic, educational or human-
ising powers of the arts were first elaborated in response to ‘negative’
theories that were perceived as dominant at the time. So, for instance,

191
192 Conclusion

Aristotle’s Poetics and his theory of dramatic catharsis (which – as was

noted – has had a pivotal role in the development of the ‘positive’ tradi-
tion) was an attempt to counteract the fierce attack on poetry that Plato
waged in his Republic. The attempt on the part of the Italian Humanists
during the Renaissance to come up with a moral defence of poetry built
on the notion of poetry as an allegory of religious truths was but an
attempt to redeem poetry and the theatre from the hostility that the
Christian Fathers of the Church (think of St Augustine, for example)
had turned into a firm tenet of Christian doctrine.
Furthermore, the authors of the ‘negative’ view of the arts, from the
very start, were acutely aware of the importance of translating their
concerns about the corrupting and distracting powers of the arts into
concrete measures and policies. Plato attempted to put into practice the
political utopia of his Republic twice in Syracuse (albeit with little suc-
cess, and a great deal of consequent personal trouble); the Fathers of the
Church repeatedly, though equally unsuccessfully, attempted to have
the theatre outlawed in Rome. The Puritan pamphleteers of sixteenth-
century England proved equally determined and altogether more suc-
cessful. As we have seen, a number of measures progressively reducing
the freedom of actors to come together and perform to a public culmi-
nated in the outright closure of all London theatres in 1642.
In contemporary times, the persistence of the view that the theatre is
capable of influencing behaviour and morality adversely was reflected,
in Britain for example, by the continuation of a system of theatre cen-
sorship up until 1969. Today, the existence of bodies such as the British
Board of Film Classification testifies to the persistence of the idea,
Platonic in its essence, that it befalls the state to protect vulnerable and
impressionable groups (such as the very young) from the damaging
effects that might arise from exposure to certain types of films.
Furthermore, a clearer understanding of the origins and historical
development of the arguments that make up the ‘negative tradition’ –
and the acknowledgment of the extent to which they are still present
(in many different guises) in contemporary thinking about the effects
of the arts – can help to explain that ‘narrative of beleaguerment’,
which, as we saw in the Introduction, informs the perspective of many
who work in the arts and the educational sector today.
A second important observation arising from this study is that under-
standing the claims for the power of the arts involves the engagement
with some highly complex intellectual issues. However, public pro-
nouncements about the value or impact of the arts rarely reflect this
complexity and tend to fall back instead on a somewhat ritualistic use
 Conclusion 193

of the ‘rhetoric of transformation’. As we have seen, the basic arguments

on the functions and powers of the arts were first elaborated in the
work of the illustrious triad represented by Plato (fifth century BC),
Aristotle (fourth century BC) and Horace (first century BC). The kernels
of both the ‘negative’ and the ‘positive’ traditions, thus, had already
been theorised over 2000 years ago, and have been evolving in different
directions ever since. However, little of the richness of this tradition
seems to have found its way into today’s public discussions around the
place of the arts in society.
Yet, one of the most interesting aspects of the historical review
presented here is that there has, in fact, never been a time in the West
when discussions of the role of the arts in society and their effects on
audiences have not been at the centre of heated debate. Moreover, any
author that put forward his or her own contribution to the debate dis-
played a clear awareness that this involved participating in a long-
standing argument. Indeed, many authors considered here were quite
explicit in asserting their intellectual allegiances as well as the ideas
and thinkers they were attempting to discredit. It is in the second half
of the twentieth century that this awareness appears more tenuous
and explicit references to earlier, millennial debates seem to become
more infrequent, both in the more abstract arena of theoretical dis-
quisitions on art and in the more practical spheres of applied research
and policy making.
Finally, a third insight that a historical approach can bring to the
exploration of the impacts of the arts is the illumination of the more
problematic issues that are rarely brought up in cultural policy debates.
For instance, we have seen how the rhetoric of the civilising powers of
the arts was systematically and coherently employed in nineteenth-
century Europe to provide a moral justification for the colonial enter-
prise. Similarly, the idea that the arts can help to shape people’s beliefs
and sense of identity had a central place in the uses (and abuses) of the
arts and culture for propaganda purposes in non-democratic and totali-
tarian political systems throughout history (the Fascist, Nazi and Soviet
regimes being only the most recent, if striking, examples). Thus, by
looking at instances of the ways in which the arts have been manipu-
lated for political ends, the ‘rhetoric of transformation’ can be seen in a
very different light.
This should make it clear that a historical approach of the type we
have advocated in this book – far from proposing a ‘total history’ and a
search for some broader meta-narrative or overarching principles to jus-
tify or explain the development of thinking about the arts and cultural
194 Conclusion

policy – rather aims at the very rejection of such a totalising scheme.

We have, in fact, attempted to concentrate our analysis on describing
differences, transformations, contingencies, continuities and disconti-
nuities in the ways in which a kernel of basic beliefs and theories about
the ways in which the arts can affect human beings have changed over
time and in accordance with the political, cultural and intellectual cli-
mate of the time. This has been, therefore, an exploration of trajectories
of ideas, which – as we have seen – rarely evolve in a straightforward and
easily traceable manner. Nor was our intention to present a teleological
view of the evolution of Western aesthetic and philosophical thinking
and indulge in a false progressivism. On the contrary, the most useful
contribution a historical perspective can make to the study of the ways
in which the arts impact on people is precisely to problematise com-
monly and acritically held assumptions.
Nor is the aim of the present enquiry to derive from the historical nar-
rative ahistorical or apolitical conclusions that can ‘explain’ the present
or direct us towards a better future. For one further advantage that
accrues from the adoption of a historical perspective is that it soon
becomes clear that views of how the arts relate to society, and views of
their transformative powers, have always been at the centre of highly
politicised debates. Consequently, the cries against the excessive politici-
sation of Arts Councils and Ministries of Culture, and the laments over
the excessive pressures and demands placed by governments of today
over the arts they finance and promote,1 when seen in a long-term his-
torical perspective lose their polemical edge. For instrumentalism is, as a
matter of fact, 2500 years old, rather than a degeneration brought about
by contemporary funding regimes. The arts have been a tool to enforce
and express power in social relations for as long as the arts themselves
have been around. We would argue that, in fact, the first lucid, cogent
and systematic theorisation of an ‘instrumental’ cultural policy (whereby
art is seen as a means to achieve non-artistic ends) can be found in Plato’s
Republic (Belfiore 2006a).
In conclusion, we hope that the present study might help arts and
humanities students, cultural policy researchers, policy-makers and cul-
tural administrators to gain a clearer sense of where commonly accepted
views on the effects of the arts actually originate from. Hopefully, by
highlighting the problematic aspects of the ‘art is good for you’ rhetoric,
and by tracing the lively trajectory of what we have called the ‘negative
tradition’, the simplistic characterisation of the social impacts of the arts
that seems orthodox in contemporary policy debates can be successfully
overcome, in favour of a more nuanced understanding of how the arts
 Conclusion 195

can affect people. This, we posit, would be a first, important step in

reconnecting – mutatis mutandis, of course – this long-standing tradition
of thought in Western civilisation to current debates about the place of
the arts in modern societies. Of course, many of the arguments elabo-
rated in the development of this tradition will no longer be relevant. It is
safe to say, for example, that – whatever the reader’s feeling for the theatre
might be – some of the arguments deployed by the Puritan writers in
their attack on the stage can be put aside without too much regret.2
However, despite the inevitable inconsequences and irrelevances,
we would argue that an understanding of how claims for the arts have
developed over time and the trajectories through which they have
become commonplace beliefs is the starting point for any serious
attempt to investigate the social impact of the arts in today’s world. In
2007, John Tusa (2007, 11) wrote that:

The real question for politicians, audiences and artists remains: why
does art matter, even if it cannot repay its public subsidy; if it repre-
sents an investment on which there is no direct quantifiable return;
if it cannot guarantee support from audiences; if it cannot demon-
strate immediate social relevance; if it cannot even say in which
direction it should be moving to deliver true innovation?
(2007, 11)

We hope that this book has illuminated the many ways in which these
questions might be answered. It is also our hope, if a little advocacy of
our own might be permitted, that an intellectual history of the kind
presented here might, even in a climate of evidence-based policy mak-
ing, be seen to have some relevance to the formulation of policies that
govern the place of the arts in our public institutions.
Notes

Introduction
1. What constitutes ‘the arts’, of course, has always been subject for debate.
We briefly review the historical development of the idea of ‘the arts’ on
pp. 16–21. A longer account can be found in ‘Classsification of the Arts’ in
Tatarkievicz (1973). For the purposes of this book, ‘the arts’ can be taken to
mean novels, poetry, the visual arts, music, dance and drama (live or on
screen). For extensions to this classification, which take further account of
the so-called creative or cultural industries, see Reeves (2002), pp. 23–7.
Our own account of the intellectual problems encountered in the attempt
to classify any one of the arts can be found in Belfiore and Bennett
(2008).
2. The 1957 figures are taken from the Unesco Statistical Yearbook 1963 and the
2005 figures from the website of the Unesco Institute for Statistics. National
figures are supplied to Unesco by the relevant agency in each country and the
decisions on which programmes are included in any category of education
are taken by these agencies. Precise comparability therefore cannot be
assured. The category ‘Arts and Humanities’ will also include some subjects
additional to those listed in note 1 above. However, the figures we have cited
here are intended to indicate a broad order of magnitude only. The growth
rates shown are replicated across a much broader sample, which includes the
United States and all the European countries for which the relevant data were
available.
3. According to Britain’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport (2007, 19),
the creative industries accounted for nearly 8 per cent of UK Gross Value
Added in 2004, compared to 4 per cent in 1998. They grew by an average of
5 per cent between 1997 and 2005, compared to an average of 3 per cent for
the economy as a whole. The DCMS defines ‘creative industries’ as including:
advertising; architecture; art and antiques markets; computer and video
games; crafts; design; designer fashion; film and video; music; performing
arts; publishing; software; television and radio.
4. The ECS is a non-profit organisation, whose aim is to help states develop
effective policy and practice for public education by providing data, research,
analysis and leadership; and by facilitating collaboration, the exchange of
ideas among the states and long-range strategic thinking (from ECS mission
statement). Huckabee was a Republican candidate in 2008 for the Presidency
of the United States.
5. For a further of discussion of this in a British context, see Bennett (1995,
199–200).
6. This inquiry led to the publication of the report, Department for Education
and Employment (1999) All our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education,
Sudbury: Dfee Publications.

196
 Notes 197

7. The full text of Gioa’s speech is available from the Stanford University web
site: http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2007/june20/gradtrans-062007.
html.
8. For a full discussion of the concept of ‘cultural pessimism’ in the arts, see
Bennett 2001, pp. 125–137.
9. For an extensive discussion of this issue, see Belfiore and Bennett (2007).
10. See, for example, Reeves (2002, 106–115) for an illustrative bibliography of
economic and social impact studies.
11. Universities have become, at least in the UK, so heavily involved in com-
missioned ‘impact research’ that we cannot, for reasons of space, give a
full account of this development here. However, for illustrative purposes
only, these are some examples of commissioned research carried out by
British academic institutions and which, we would suggest, are representa-
tive of the type of work being carried out in Britain over the last decade or
so: in 2001, researchers at the University of Glasgow were commissioned
by the Scottish Arts Council to produce a study into impact evaluation
that resulted in the publication of an extended document entitled ‘Toolkit
for evaluating arts projects in social inclusion areas’ (Dean et al. 2001); in
2002, DCMS commissioned from the Centre for Leisure and Sport Research
at Leeds Metropolitan University, a study entitled ‘Count me In: The
dimensions of social inclusions through culture & sport’ (Long et.al.
2002); 2003 saw the publication of a study conducted by DeMontfort
University under commission by the ACE on the socio-economic impact
of festivals in the East Midlands region of England, entitled ‘Festivals and
the Creative Region’ (Maughan and Bianchini 2003); The University of
Newcastle was commissioned by the European Commission to produce a
cross-national study of cultural policies in Member States that fight social
exclusion though culture (Woods et. al. 2004); Hooper-Greenhill (2004,
161) of Leicester University, openly refers to a piece of research commis-
sioned by Resource (now the Museums, Archives and Libraries Council)
into the impact of learning through museum attendance as ‘instrumental
and policy related’. This moved Andrew Newman (2006) to comment that
the aim of the research ‘appears to be primarily one of facilitating advo-
cacy rather than understanding the processes involved in learning in
museum and galleries’.
12. Purnell was appointed UK Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
when Gordon Brown succeeded Tony Blair as Prime Minister in 2007.
13. This passage from an article published by James Fenton in the Guardian in
the summer of 2004 is indicative of the tone of the media polemic; com-
menting on New Labour’s rhetoric around arts funding, he writes: ‘It
descends from Stalinism, from the old questions of the form: “What has
your string quartet done, comrade, to further the cause of revolution?” One
might have expected such perverse rhetoric to die with Stalinism. Instead it
morphed into a social-democratic “instrumentalism” – the arts were to be
judged as instruments of social change. The oboe concerto was expected to
help young mothers escape the poverty trap.’
14. The inverted commas are justified by the fact that neither ‘art for art’s
sake’, nor the ‘intrinsic value’ of the arts were, in fact, ever the guiding
principle for cultural policy making in Britain or anywhere else. Indeed,
198 Notes

the very notion of a public policy for the cultural sector necessarily
implies a view according to which the state supports the arts on the
grounds of its perceived ‘usefulness’ to achieve a welcome outcome
(though such expected outcomes are bound to change with the times)
(Gray 2006).
15. According to HM Treasury in the UK, Public Service Agreements (PSAs)
‘are a clear commitment to the public on what they can expect for their
money and each agreement sets out explicitly which minister is account-
able for delivery of targets underpinning that commitment’ (HM Treasury,
2007). Funding Agreements are those drawn up between Government
departments and the Non-Departmental Public Bodies (NDPBs) that they
support.
16. For example, Arts Council England’s contribution to DCMS Public Service
Agreement (PSA) 3 delivery plan (16 July 2006 version) sets out targets for
combating social exclusion through increasing involvement in the arts
from Black or minority ethnic groups (BME); people with a mental or phys-
ical disability; and socio-economic groups C2, D and E (Arts Council
England, 2006, 3).
17. Jowell’s successor, James Purcell, went even further. One of his first deci-
sions on appointment was to invite Sir Brian McMaster, a former Director
of the Edinburgh International Festival, to report on ways in which the
Government could continue to support the arts and promote excellence,
but in a way ‘that does not stifle with unnecessary targets’ (DCMS, 2007).
In his first speech as Secretary of State, he declared that he wanted to
‘keep the passion and throw away the package of targetolatry’ (Purnell,
2007).
18. Holden (2004, 42) describes ‘Public Value’ as ‘the value added [bold in orig-
inal] by government and the public sector in its widest sense. [...] In other
words it is the difference between what citizens give to and what they
receive from public bodies’.
19. The book has its origins in a three-year research project, one of four funded
jointly by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council and Arts Council
England, and set up with the aim of exploring the impact of the arts from a
number of different perspectives. The project commenced in 2004 on the
clear understanding that the research would be autonomously conducted
and detached from any advocacy concerns that the sponsors might have.
Further information may be found at: http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/about/ke/
evaluation/impact/impact_fellows.asp

1 Towards a New Approach to Researching

the Social Impacts of the Arts
1. For a discussion of ‘new’ cultural history and what differentiates it from
classical cultural history, see Burke 2004, ch. 3. In short, the difference
between the two can be identified in the adoption, by new cultural
historians, of a broader understanding of what culture is, based on an
anthropological definition of culture.
 Notes 199

2. In other words, ‘Europe’ will be used throughout this book to mean a

broader entity than that contained within its geographical boundaries, or,
to borrow Wallerstein’s (1997, 63) expression, ‘more as a cultural than as a
cartographical expression’, so as to encompass jointly Europe and North
America.
3. There are three reasons, according to Posner (2003, 223) why literary criti-
cism has consistently proved to be a privileged medium of expression for
public intellectuals, which he summarises thus: ‘First, the general educated
public, which is the audience for that work [public-intellectual work], is also
the audience for works of literature, and it takes some interest in what
experts have to say about them. Second, many works of literature deal with
political, social, or economic questions; there is a clue to this in the number
of writers among the most prominent public intellectuals [...] . Third, the
cultural significance of literature – in education, in relation to other
subjects, particularly of a scientific or social-scientific cast, and in relation
to popular culture – is itself an ideological issue’. See also Eagleton 2003,
pp. 80–1.
4. This view of the intellectual’s ability to deal with a number of different aca-
demic areas is consistent with the adoption of a methodological framework
based on the discipline of ‘intellectual history’. As Megill (2004, 550) explains:
‘[e]specially in its closely related variant, “the history of ideas”, intellectual
history has more often than not appeared as a hybrid genre crossing discipli-
nary boundaries’. The need for an interdisciplinary approach is indeed a
belief shared by scholars working in both the ‘intellectual’ and ‘cultural’ his-
tory sub-fields (Kelley 2002, 5).
5. For a more detailed discussion of the limitations of essentialist definitions of
art, see Dean 2003.
6. For a more detailed discussion of the strength and weaknesses of both func-
tionalist and institutional definitions of art, see Davies 2001.
7. Young (1997, 58) defines an intrinsic property as ‘a property a thing possesses
independently of any relation it bears to anything else’.
8. Harrington (2004, 25 ff.) highlights the role of anthropological studies of art
in indigenous societies in contributing to show ‘the extent to which western
metaphysical conceptions of art and beauty reflect specific intellectual devel-
opments of their time and milieux and do not necessarily possess transcul-
tural validity’. This type of study also contests the notion, first developed in
seventeenth-century Europe, that the aesthetic experience belongs to a sphere
quite separate from that of everyday life. Anthropological studies, conversely,
aim at looking at the types of activities that we consider artistic in relation to
‘total cultural systems’ – that is, in relation to a broad range of other social
activities such as hunting, eating, rituals and festival, agriculture, etc.
9. The distinction Naussbaum refers to here begins to take shape with Plato.
Naddaff (2002, 6) defines the exile of the poets at Plato’s hand as an exercise
in the creation of an autonomous space for philosophical enquiry through
‘an attempt to break down the poets’ exclusive control, their totalising cul-
tural, social and literary power. Stated differently, the exile counteracts the
poets’ own exclusion and the silencing of all other voices. The censorship of
poetry opens up rather than closes down the possibility of new forms of
200 Notes

discourse.’ The form of discourse that Naddaff here refers to is obviously

that of philosophy as an independent and autonomous field of intellectual
enquiry. As Andrea Nightingale (1995, 11) further explains, ‘in order to
create the specialised discipline of philosophy, Plato had to distinguish
what he was doing from all other discursive practices that laid claims to
wisdom. [...] It should be emphasised that gestures of opposition and exclu-
sion play a crucial role in Plato’s many attempts to mark the boundaries of
‘philosophy’. Indeed, it is precisely by designating certain modes of dis-
course and spheres of activity as ‘anti-philosophical’ that Plato was able to
create a separate identity for ‘philosophy’.
10. For an extensive treatment of the responses to postmodern challenges to
the methods and legitimacy of the historical disciplines, see Zagorin
1999.
11. The postmodern challenge to History and traditional historiography is
heavily indebted to the theories of Michel Foucault. In particular, in his
Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977, Foucault
(1980) presents an indictment of the values of the Enlightenment, which is
charged with the introduction of new and unseeming modes of oppres-
sion. Foucault also shows how, in each and every society, power and knowl-
edge intermingle, so as to give shape to ‘regimes of truth’ and dominant
discourses that shape the boundaries of what it is possible to say or know.
This is Zagorin’s (1999, 9) interpretation of the influence of Foucaldian
thought over the historical disciplines: ‘In historiography and other fields
these postmodernist themes, often tinged with an admixture of Marxism,
have been widely incorporated in radical versions of feminism, multicul-
turalism, and affirmations of ethnic or sexual identity. Among them are
opposition to humanism and to the idea of mankind and a common human
nature as pernicious myths; the assurance that what passes for reason or
truth is invariably the product of the ideological and political interests of
hegemonic groups whose domination shapes discourse; and the pervasive
suspicion of an insidious cultural imperialism, ethnocentrism, or sexism
implicit in all statements of moral principles.’
12. For a differently argued, yet fundamentally similar position, see Zagorin
2000, 205–6.
13. Amin (1988, 90–1) calls this appropriation of an idealised notion of classical
Greece ‘the myth of Greek ancestry’.
14. For an exhaustive discussion of the arnoldian legacy of post-war British cul-
tural policy, see Bennett 2005.
15. The Liberal Humanist ideal is based on what the cultural anthropologist
Clifford Geertz (1993, 34–5) refers to as ‘the Enlightenment view of man’.
The trouble with this view is, he explains, ‘that the image of a constant
human nature independent of time, place, and circumstance, of studies and
professions, transient fashions and temporary opinion, may be an illusion,
that what a man is may be so entangled with where he is, who he is, and
what he believes in that it is inseparable from them’.
16. Davies is referring here in particular to the writings of Theodor W. Adorno,
who develops some of these themes in Dialectic of Enlightenment (2002 edn),
which he co-authored with Max Horkheimer (especially the chapter entitled
‘Elements of Anti-Semitism: Limits of Enlightenment’).
 Notes 201

17. For a philosophical discussion and confutation of the arguments commonly

employed to discredit mass art in relation to high art, see Noël Carroll’s A
Philosophy of Mass Art (1998).
18. The categories of functions here identified have been obtained from exam-
ining the work of over 150 philosophers, writers, intellectuals, poets, artists,
scientists, etc.; however, due to obvious limits of space, not all can be
reviewed and discussed.
19. It is worth reiterating here the ‘constructed’ nature of our contemporary
understanding of the different art forms and the boundaries between them.
For instance, the discussion of Plato’s attack of the theatre and poetry, which
we will consider shortly, was in fact, in the mind of the Athenian philoso-
pher, simply a censure of ‘mimetic poetry’. Indeed, in his understanding of
the term, he included both art forms, on the grounds that both tragedies
and epic poems where in fact ‘performed’ by actors and rhapsodes
respectively.

2 Corruption and Distraction

1. For a more detailed discussion of Platonic arguments on the impacts of the
arts, see Belfiore 2006a.
2. John Passmore (1991, 107) refers to the belief that art has nothing important
to say about ourselves and the world around us (based on the notion that art
is aware of nothing else but art) as the ‘all art is about art’ doctrine.
3. It is worth referring here, to Jerome Stolnitz’s (2004, 337) words of caution
about easy discriminations in this field: ‘So far as one can characterize the
vast, succeeding literature, the cognitivists have predominated against the
sceptics, through we must always bear in mind their profound intra-mural
differences over the nature of artistic truth, the vehicles of embodying and
communicating such truths, and indeed the appropriate and therefore
unorthodox meaning of ‘truth’.
4. For a discussion of issues of truth in art with regards to the visual arts, see
Kieran 2005, 121 ff.
5. On the subjective and emotive aspects of the cognitivist position, see
Matravers’s (1998) Art and Emotion, especially ch. 7, ‘The Cognitive
Theory’.
6. As later parts of this book will show, this belief in the arts as a privileged
route to knowledge and understanding is quite strongly rooted in Western
culture. In Christopher Butler’s (2004, 16) words: ‘This urge to find mean-
ing is the end result of a great deal of adaptive evolution, and brings with it
an (often indirect) desire for the acquisition of knowledge; that is, the truth.
This is a vital part of our experience of works of art’.
7. Carroll’s own position is not to be identified with any of these options,
since the broader aim of his paper is to highlight the shortcomings of the
three leading philosophical objections to the idea that art and literature can
represent a source of knowledge. The second half of his paper, thus, is
devoted to a confutation of the three arguments, based on the observation
that ‘it is extremely peculiar that philosophers would raise these particular
objections against literature, since philosophy employs a gamut of
202 Notes

techniques to produce knowledge and learning that are analogous to those

found in literature’ (2004, 7).
8. In Beardsley’s (1981[1958], 379) own words: ‘According to some aestheti-
cians, a painting or a musical composition is not to be understood by com-
parison with a verbal statement, but rather by comparison with a gesture, or
a dramatic act, or the moon coming out from behind a cloud. It does not
make assertions about, but reveals, the nature of reality, and hence, though
it may not strictly be called “true,” it may be called “illuminating,” “enlight-
ening,” or “instructive.” This view I shall call the Revelation Theory of the
cognitive status of painting and music’ (emphasis in the original).
9. The understanding of ‘genuine knowledge’ in this context is clarified by John
(2001, 330): ‘Knowledge is supposed to have withstood some kind of scrutiny:
it is supposed to be tested, well-considered, based on relevant evidence.’
10. One of the most prominent advocate of this view in the last 20 years has
been Peter Kivy (1997), who refers to this position as the ‘propositional the-
ory of literary truth’.
11. Similar arguments are also proposed by Stolnitz 2004.
12. For the meaning, here, of the expression ‘proper knowledge’, please refer to
note no. 10.
13. The British Board for Film Classification (BBFC) openly states that one of
the main considerations when making decisions about classification is
whether the film or video in question is, at the age group concerned, ‘likely
to be harmful’ (From the BBFC’s official web site: http://www.bbfc.co.uk/
policy/index.php; accessed on 28th January 2006).
14. For a more detailed discussion of the arguments put forward by each of
these authors against the theatre, see Barish 1981, Bruch 2004, and Spingarn
1908.
15. Despite the suspicion displayed by the Fathers of the Church for the theatre,
not all art was deemed perverse. An obvious example of acceptable art forms
is represented by religious art, that is, art that not only represents religious
objects, but does so for explicitly didactical purposes. As Rockmore (2004,
21) explains, ‘[f]or Christianity [...] art, meaning sacred art, including paint-
ings, sculpture, architecture, illuminated manuscripts, tapestries, meaning
art with a specially disclosive function within the religious context, plays a
rather different, more clearly cognitive role in not simply characterizing the
sacred in human terms, but more precisely in enabling us to “know” sacred
reality’.
16. See: Ward and Anthony 1932; Waller 1932; Thompson 1966; Rice 1997;and
Lake and Questier 2002, ch. 11. It is also worth mentioning that, although
the attack on the stage at the hands of Puritan writers reached in England a
particularly venomous apex, the Roman Catholic Church too, by the fif-
teenth century had begun to express concerns for the despicably low levels
of morality in which the theatre (and religious theatre in particular)
appeared to have descended. Hence campaigns for the closure of theatres in
Paris, as well as London in the mid-sixteenth century (Glyn-Jones 1996,
255–6). Similarly, O’Connor’s (2000) essay offers an exhaustive discussion
of the antitheatrical polemic in early modern Spain, where charges against
the theatre centred around its corrupting power and the undermining of
the buenas constumbres (good mores) that it allegedly encouraged.
 Notes 203

17. Steve Bruce (2002, 3) in his study of the paradigm of secularisation in the
West, links secularisation to modernisation and defines it thus: ‘a social
condition manifest in (a) the declining importance of religion for the oper-
ation of non-religious roles and institutions such as those of the state and
the economy; (b) a decline in the social standing of religious roles and insti-
tutions; and (c) a decline in the extent to which people engage in religious
practices, display beliefs of a religious kinds ,and conduct other aspects of
their lives in a manner informed by such beliefs’.
18. The English translation of the Lettre referred to here is Alan Bloom’s
(Rousseau 1960 edn).
19. See Barish 1981, ch. 9 and Osipovich 2004.
20. This is further confirmed by the educational model presented in Rousseau’s
Émile (1762), a fictional account of the education of a young boy, presided
over by Rousseau himself. Unsurprisingly, the arts were carefully eliminated
from Émile’s curriculum.
21. Aristotle’s theory of dramatic catharsis is discussed extensively in Chapter 3
of this volume.
22. A Jesuit wrote anonymously to Rousseau to point out that ‘[w]e could, Sir, be
much more edified by all the fine things you say against the spectacles, if
you did not at the same time tell us that it is in frequenting them that you
have learned all those fine things’ (cited in Barish 1981, 264).
23. It is interesting to remark how, despite the existence of a body such as the
Board of Film Classification - which effectively reflects the belief, on the part
of the British government, that certain films might have a negative impact on
young and impressionable audiences – film policy too has seen the develop-
ment of an instrumental rhetoric that defends public spending on the British
film industry on the grounds of the alleged beneficial impacts of film on the
socially excluded. John Hill (2004) has indeed shown how UK film policy has
been in fact harnessed to contribute to New Labour’s social inclusion agenda.
Consequently, the rhetorical focus in the debate over public funding of the
film sector is on the perceived social benefits of the cinematic experience,
with no reference at all made to any potential negative impacts of film.
24. Thorson and Öberg (2003), however, having reviewed the existing histori-
cal evidence, have questioned the popular belief that a suicide epidemic
really took place after the publication of Goethe’s novel.
25. The methodology used by Phillips to establish this suggestion–imitation
model for the explanation of suicidal behaviour has been subjected to criti-
cism and scrutiny (see, for instance, Hittner 2005); nevertheless, the others
sources cited seem to agree on the positive correlation between exposition
to material of violent content and an impact on behaviour in predisposed
individuals.
26. In particular, Catharine MacKinnon has been a most influential personal-
ity in arguing, from a feminist perspective, for the acknowledgement of the
links between pornography and violence on women; see MacKinnon 1987,
127–33.
27. By the notion of the ‘direction’ of causation, Harold refers to the possibility
that rather than pornography causing violence, the opposite case might be
true, that naturally violent people might be drawn to consume pornogra-
phy (and more so than non-violent people).
204 Notes

28. The direction that Tolstoy wished art to take is indicated in the conclusion
of What is Art? (1930 edn, 211–12): ‘The destiny of art in our time is to trans-
mit from the realm of reason to the realm of feeling the truth that well-
being for men consists in being united together, and to set up, in place of
the existing reign of force, that kingdom of God, i.e. of love, which we all
recognise to be the highest of human life.’
29. Hanson (1998, 207) puts forward an interesting counter-argument to
Danto’s critique of psychic distance, and argues: ‘If we do not see the con-
nection between the pitiful events portrayed on stage and the dreadful cir-
cumstances on the street, why blame the play or playwright and not
ourselves? The idea is farfetched that a play might exhaust our capacity for
sympathy and purge us of any inclination to behave responsibly in the face
of real opportunities for doing so; but if there were such plays, isn’t it we
who should still be faulted for indulging in them, in preference to other
works, as we might be faulted in choosing to dull our reactions to the mis-
fortunes of others by indulging in drinks and drugs? It is, in any case, hard
to see that – why or how – plays about injustice would necessarily have this
deeply enervating effect.’ The distinction made earlier between ‘controlled’
and ‘automatic’ processes of ‘infection’ through the arts is obviously most
relevant here, and it could be argued that if the work of art has an impact on
our behaviour that we are unaware of, then this ought to be seen as a mitigat-
ing circumstance that would reduce personal responsibility for ‘allowing’
the artwork to impact on us and make us irresponsive to the injustices it
depicts.
30. Despite his concerns about these ethical issues in contemporary art, and
literature in particular, it would be misleading to imply that Adorno’s view
of culture is totally negative. Indeed, Adorno’s concept of ‘authentic’ culture
somewhat mitigates the scepticism of the statement above, by suggesting
that truly great art has the power to transform a particular and individual
experience into a universally meaningful statement. A full discussion of
Adorno’s thinking on the arts is unfortunately beyond the scope of this
book, but an intelligent yet accessible exposition of the principal ideas elab-
orated by Adorno on the arts and the cultural industry can be found in Held
1990 (especially ch. 3), and an interesting discussion of Adorno’s notion of
autonomous art can be found in Harding 1992. Similarly, the critique that
Adorno builds against the idea of committed literature cannot be given full
justice here, though it is important to mention that an important aspect of
Adorno’s position is represented by his belief that an explicit and deliberate
political commitment in art is likely to compromise the autonomy which he
felt to be the prerequisite of any ‘authentic’ art (Haslett 2000, 104).
31. Barzun (1975, 18) cites a passage by Ernest Hemingway that encapsulate this
view: ‘A country, finally, erodes and the dust blows away, the people die and
none of them were of any importance permanently, except those who prac-
ticed the arts. [...] A thousand years makes economics silly and a work of art
endures forever’. This Barzun (ibid., 19) takes to be a typical example of that
view according to which ‘[h]human beings have no importance, they do
not last a thousand years. Art has and does.’
32. Harold Bloom (1994, 28) makes a very similar point in his discussion of the
Western literary canon.
 Notes 205

3 Catharsis
1. According to Kostic9 (1960, 65), the first to have this insight was the Italian
critic Vettori, in his Petrii Victorii Commentarii, in primum librum Aristotelis de
Arte Poetarum, published in Florence in 1560. The essence of Aristotle’s
response to Plato’s suspicion of the power of poetry and theatre to arouse
dangerous emotions (leading to them being banned from the ideal state) is,
then, that these are in fact ‘purged’ and neutralised through tragedy. Hence,
as Nuttall (1996, 7) puts it, ‘[...] Aristotle’s point is that the civil authorities
can relax; the emotions go away. In which case the poet may be permitted to
stay in the city.’
2. Golden (1962, 51), for instance, refers to Aristotle’s notion of catharsis as ‘one
of the “big” ideas in literary criticism’. The eminent classical scholar Gerald
F. Else, in his influential book entitled Aristotle’s Poetics: The argument (1963,
443–4), puts forward a contrary, and more controversial, argument, by point-
ing out that it is the later commentators that have put so much emphasis on
the idea of theatrical catharsis, though there is very little evidence that
catharsis had a central role in Aristotle’s thinking. Had it been a notion cen-
tral to Aristotle’s Poetics, Else’s argument goes, he would have referred to it
more than once, rather than mentioning it only in passing in Chapter 6,
never to go back to it again.
3. In Aristotle’s plans (as he mentions himself in the opening line of chapter 6),
a second part dealing specifically with comedy ought to have followed this
discussion of tragedy. This part, however, was either never written or lost
forever.
4. The controversial term ka9uarsin is also translated as purgation by Dorsch
1965 and Potts 1962.
5. Such as, for instance, Bywater 1909 and Halliwell 1995.
6. The importance of the attention that the notion of tragic catharsis roused
during the Italian Renaissance should not be underestimated, for, as the
unfolding discussion will attempt to show, the work of the Italian critics will
prove most influential on later understandings of the didactic function of the
arts. As Kostic9 (1960, 69) observes: ‘generally speaking, Italian criticism is by
far the most important body of Renaissance criticism; not only did the criti-
cal activity begin to develop in Italy for the first time, but the critics from
other countries were in most cases content to follow Italian models.’
7. This passage from the English translation by Robert Peterson in 1576 of the
Galateo of Giovanni della Casa (1503–1556) is emblematic of the influential
view popular with sixteenth-century Italian critics: ‘Albeit, not long since I
heard it said to a worthy gentleman our neighbour, that men have many
times more need to weep than to laugh. And for that cause, he said, these
doleful tales which we call tragedies were devised at first, that when they
were played in the theatre (as at that time they were wont) they might draw
forth tears out of their eyes, that had need to spend them. And so they were
by their weeping healed of their infirmity’ (cited in Herrick 1926, 159).
8. Jacob Bernays (2004, first published in 1857), who many commentators con-
sider the most prominent exponent of this position in modern times, defines
this as ‘the pathological point of view’, which he sees as a distinct interpreta-
tive perspective in its own right, that does not have to be necessarily linked
206 Notes

to the moralistic dimension. He argues: ‘And why should one look on theat-
rical catharsis from a moral or hedonistic point of view before one tries to
do it from that point of view from which Aristotle has approached catharsis
in general in the Politics? But that is not the moralistic, nor as little the
purely hedonistic; it is a pathological point of view’ (ibid., 325).
9. Halliwell has borrowed the expression from Veselin Kostic9 (1960) who first
used it in the context of his discussion of interpretations of catharsis devel-
oped by Renaissance critics.
10. For an interesting discussion of the interpretation of tragic catharsis amongst
critics in eighteenth-century Spain, see Darst (1971).
11. This passage also clearly shows that Milton subscribed to the ‘homeopathic’
understanding of the processes by which catharsis takes place that was dis-
cussed earlier.
12. Breuer (Freud and Breuer 1955, 21) himself describes Anna as having ‘great
poetic and imaginative gifts’, and it would appear that we owe her the term
‘talking-cure’ to describe the psychoanalytical process (ibid., 30).
13. Psychodrama was first created in Vienna in the 1920s and gave rise to much
interest, especially in the USA, only to come back to Europe for a period of
growth in the 1950s. Though psychodrama was not initially developed as
the form of therapeutic theatre the label indicates today, its therapeutic
potential soon became obvious, and Moreno was a key figure in this shift
(Røine 1997, ch. 1).
14. In Stanislavsky’s own words (ibid. 1937, 177): ‘You can understand a part,
sympathize with the person portrayed, and put yourself in his place, so that
you will act as he would. That will arouse feelings in the actor that are
analogous to those required for the part. But those feelings will belong, not
to the person created by the authors of the play, but to the actor himself’
(emphasis in the original).
15. For a refutation of Golden’s and Nussbaum’s epistemological interpretation
of catharsis, see Nuttall (1996, 11–15).

4 Personal Well-Being
1. For Schopenhauer, however, just as for romantic aesthetics, art is ultimately
a higher form of cognition, in that art alone can penetrate Maya, or the veil
of appearances.
2. The present discussion of William Morris’s conceptions of the function of
art has to be necessarily a very brief one. However, a detailed and perceptive
discussion of Morris’s ‘The Aims of Art’ and its relation to Morris’s socialist
thinking can be found in Upchurch 2005.
3. Indeed, as Dewey (1980 edn, 46) laments, ‘we have no word in the English
language that unambiguously includes what is signified by the two words
‘artistic’ and ‘esthetic’. Since ‘artistic’ refers primarily to the act of production
and ‘esthetic’ to that of perception and enjoyment, the absence of a term
designating the two processes taken together is unfortunate’.
4. Huizinga (1970, ch. 10) makes similar points for the other arts: music, dance
and the plastic arts.
 Notes 207

5. In the literature of the emerging discipline of ‘happiness studies’, a number

of references appear to the role of leisure time spent enjoying the arts and
popular culture as a source of happiness. See, for instance, Nettle (2005,
155) and Argyle (2001, ch. 8) on the effects of watching TV and listening to
music on happiness and other aspects of well-being. For a contrary view, see
Layard (2005).
6. As Tessa Dalley (1984, xii) explains, the difference between ‘ “art” in the
traditional sense and art as it is used for therapeutic purposes’ is that in the
former the final artistic product is the very end of the creative exercises, and
the process of creating, which is usually a solitary one, becomes secondary.
Things are different in the case of art therapy: ‘In contrast, art activity
undertaken in a therapy setting, with clear corrective or treatment aims, in
the presence of a therapist, has a different purpose and objective. In ther-
apy, the person and process become most important, as art is used as a
means of non-verbal communication. Put more elaborately, art activity pro-
vides a concrete rather than verbal medium through which a person can
achieve both conscious and unconscious expression, and can be used as a
valuable agent for therapeutic change.’
7. The failure to capture the different impacts that are logically to be expected
of different arts activities – and particularly from participatory vs. non-
participatory ones – is one of the most crucial points of criticism moved
against current methodologies for the evaluation of the social impacts of
the arts (Belfiore 2006b, 31).
8. Translation by Robert Feagles, quoted in Rojcewicz (2004).
9. As Brown (1997, xvii) explains, however, the creation of images does not in
itself resolve traumas or psychological problems. Rather, in art therapies, ‘a
healing process can occur using symbols, provided there is a positive trans-
formation of the symbol’.
10. Two representative examples of the literature on the beneficial impacts of
writing creatively are Frank (1991), who movingly writes about how writing
about illness can help to work out ways to accept and deal with ill health,
and DeSalvo (1999, 25), who clarifies that ‘[w]riting that describes traumatic
or distressing events in detail and how we felt about these events then and
feel about them now is the only kind of writing about trauma that clinically
has been associated with improved health’. Androutsopoulou (2001) dis-
cusses the idea that talking about a favourite piece of fiction might represent
a ‘safe’ vehicle for the discussion of personal issues and traumas. For a
detailed discussion of the bibliotherapy methods, and the differences
between ‘reading bibliotherapy’, ‘interactive bibliothearpy’ and ‘poetry ther-
apy’, see McCarty Hynes and Hynes-Berry (1994; especially ch. 1). See also
Staricoff (2004) for an extensive review of the relevant medical literature.
11. As Riordan and Wilson (1989) show, however, the medical community is
not unanimous with regards to bibliotherapy’s effectiveness as a therapeutic
intervention.
12. Art programmes have been also claimed to have a range of beneficial psy-
chological effects on patients affected by other, non-mental conditions.
Ferszt and colleagues (2000), for instance, have conducted a study of the
impacts of an art programme on an inpatient oncology unit. They found
208 Notes

that benefits deriving from the programme included improving patients’

ability to cope with pain, improved communication between nurses and
patients, and improved attitudes towards hospitalisation.
13. For a literature review on the theme of ‘quality of life’ in relation to partici-
pation in the arts, see Galloway et al. 2006.

5 Education and Self-Development

1. This aspect of Aristotelian thought was also picked up by Bertolt Brecht
(1964 edn, 181), who writes: ‘Thus, what the ancients, following Aristotle,
demanded of tragedy is nothing higher or lower than it should entertain
people. Theatre may be said to be derived from ritual, but that is only to say
that it becomes theatre once the two have separated; what it brought over
from the mysteries was not its formal ritual function, but purely and simply
the pleasure which accompanied this. And the catharsis of which Aristotle
writes – cleansing by fear and pity, or from fear and pity – is a purification
which is performed not only in a pleasurable way, but precisely for the pur-
pose of pleasure. To ask or to accept more of the theatre is to set one’s own
mark too low.’
2. The strength of the Roman prejudice against poetry is evident from Cicero’s
Pro Archia, because here Cicero clearly declares that he is not ashamed of his
love of poetry, and is also confirmed by the vehemence of Horace’s defence
of poetry and the emphasis (implicitly polemical) placed on the much
higher status of the poet in Greece than in Rome (Innes 1989, 266).
3. In these short verses Horace effectively sets the agenda for much of the later
debate over the aims of poetry. As Abrams (1953, 16) puts it: ‘prodesse and
delectare, to teach and to please, together with another term introduced
from rhetoric, movere, to move, served for centuries to collect under three
heads the sum of aesthetic effects on the reader. The balance between these
terms altered in the course of time. To the overwhelming majority of
Renaissance critics, as to Sir Philip Sydney, the moral effect was the termi-
nal aim, to which delight and emotion were auxiliary. From the time of the
critical essays of Dryden through the eighteenth century, pleasure tended
to become the ultimate end, although poetry without profit was often held
to be trivial, and the optimistic moralist believed with James Beattie that if
poetry instructs, it only pleases the more effectually.’ This debate between
pleasure vs. instruction as the true aim of art has remained very lively in
modern times. One of the most influential representatives of the ‘hedonis-
tic’ view is the American philosopher George Santayana, who, in his The
Sense of Beauty argues: ‘science is the response to the demand of informa-
tion, and in it we ask for the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Art is
the response to the demand for entertainment, and truth enters into it only
as it subserves these ends’ (in Cassirer 1979, 202).
4. So, for the Italian poet Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) the end of poetry (‘fine’) is
to be useful by delighting (‘giovare dilettando’). Similarly, for John Milton
(1608–1674), the poet has the power to ‘inbreed and cherish in a great people
the seeds of vertu and public civility’, and to teach ‘the whole book of sanctity
and vertu through all the instances of example’ (in Steadman 1962, 117).
 Notes 209

5. As shown by Sperduti (1950) in his thorough review, the idea of the divine
nature of poets was a commonly accepted notion throughout antiquity, and
the influence of this notion also was to become a significant inspiration for
the Renaissance critics, many of whom referred to the divine origin of
poetry in their quest for a convincing defence of poetry from the Christian
censure.
6. As Spingarn (1908, 21) explains, the authority of Plato during the Renaissance
was such that it made it impossible to just disregard his arguments against
poetry. As a result many of the writers in sixteenth-century Italy felt the
need to refute, or at least to try and explain, the reasons for Plato’s indict-
ment of poetry, and to come up with convincing counter-arguments.
7. As if the pagan content of classical literature were not enough to solicit sus-
picious reactions from Christians leaders and philosophers, the very idea of
indulging in the pleasures of literature seemed, to Christian philosophers,
extremely dubious. As Saintsbury (1902, 381) puts it, ‘To Augustine, as to
monk and homilist long afterwards, not merely was the theology of litera-
ture false, and its morals detestable, but it was – merely as occupation –
frivolous and puerile, a thing unworthy not only of a Christian but even of
a reasonable being.’
8. Admittedly, Davidson (2004) does not connect Tyler’s words to a Horatian
influence. However, other scholars of American literature of the eighteenth
century have highlighted the influence of Horace’s poetry on the develop-
ment of certain strands of American literature (and social satire particu-
larly), showing how selected famous lines by the Latin author were routinely
imitated (Ward and Trent, et al. 1907–21; Shields 1983, vol. XVI). It is there-
fore possible to assume that Horace and his work were largely known to
American intellectuals of that time and likely to have exerted a certain
influence on views of the nature and functions of poetry and literature.
9. German idealism is a philosophical school that emerged in Germany
towards the end of the eighteenth century mainly as a reaction to Kantian
thought. Other main representatives, together with Hegel, were Fichte and
Schelling.
10. The concept of the ‘spirit’, which he expounded at length in his
Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) is cardinal to Hegel’s thought, but it is too
complex to be adequately discussed here. However, as Horstmann (2000,
337) explains, Hegelian philosophy of spirit ‘treats of various psychologi-
cal, social and cultural forms of reality. It is characterized by the assump-
tion of the existence of something like genuine, spiritual facts, which
cannot be described as subjective states of individual persons possessing
consciousness, but which have an independent, objective existence. For
Hegel, examples of such facts are the state, art, religion and history.’ The
development of the ‘spirit’, indeed, takes place through three principal
moments: the ‘subjective’ (that is, the individual spirit in all its faculties),
the ‘objective’ spirit (the supra-individual or social spirit) and the ‘absolute’
spirit, which is the spirit when it reaches full knowledge and awareness of
itself in the forms of art, religion and philosophy (Abbagano and Fornero
1986: vol. 3; 133).
11. Notions of self-cultivation are indeed central to ideas of Bildung (Bruford
1975, 1).
210 Notes

12. We are grateful to Egil Bjornsen for pointing us in the direction of Barnard’s
essay, and for sharing his work on the notion of Bildung in relation to
Norwegian cultural policy.
13. Gramsci filled in excess of 30 notebooks with his thoughts on politics and
culture while in prison in Rome, during the Fascist regime, between 1926
and 1934.

6 Moral Improvement and Civilisation

1. Quatremère was a fierce opponent of the republican left, and because of his
political faith was imprisoned during the Terror of 1793. In 1795, he was
involved in the failed royalist insurrection of 13 Vendémaire (Adams
2004, 2).
2. In his notes to Shelley’s essay, David Lee Clark (Shelley 1954 edn, 297) com-
ments that ‘[j]ust as the plowman prepares the soil for the seed, so does the
poet prepare mind and heart for the reception of new ideas, and thus for
change’. This is, however, a view of the social function of poets and intel-
lectuals that was already being developed in the previous century. Zygmunt
Bauman (1987, 68) summarises the attitudes of the early modern European
cultural elites and their self-appointed role as guides of humanity thus: ‘The
tremendous potential of humanity cannot be realised without the help of
the mediators, who interpret the precepts of Reason and act on them, set-
ting conditions which will make the individuals willing, or obliged to fol-
low their human vocation.’ What is original in the writers considered here,
then, is the re-elaborations of older arguments in tones that are suffused
with a romantic sensibility.
3. With regards to the social criticism implied in Romantic notions of poetry
and the poet, Eagleton (2000, 16–17) observes: ‘Art could now model the
good life not by representing it but simply by being itself, by what it showed
rather than by what it said, offering the scandal of its own pointlessly self-
delighting existence as silent critique of exchange-value and instrumental
rationality. But this elevation of art in the service of humanity was inevita-
bly self-undoing, as it lent the Romantic artist a transcendent status at odds
with his or her political significance, and as, in the perilous trap of all uto-
pia, the image of the good life came gradually to stand in for its actual
unavailability.’
4. Bennett (2006, 130), in particular, singles out the particular, institutionally
privileged position of the arts (as distinguished from a broader notion of
culture) in the British funding system as an indication of the long-lasting
and deep influence of Romantic theories over contemporary thinking on
the arts: ‘The construction of a state cultural policy based on the arts [...] can
in many respects be seen as an institutional reflection of the status accorded
to poetry by Wordsworth and Shelley’.
5. For an extensive discussion of parliamentary debates and views discussed in
the nineteenth century, see Minihan 1977; Pearson 1982; Bennett 1998, ch. 5.
6. According to Milner and Browitt (2002, 7), ‘[t]here can be little doubt that
cultural studies did indeed emerge by way of quasi-populist reaction against
the elitism of older forms of literary study’.
 Notes 211

7. The link that Nussbaum makes between literature and moral philosophy
inevitably places a great burden of responsibility on the poet and the novelist.
Indeed, many writers have shown a profound awareness of and respect for
such a burden. For example, in 1876, in a letter to Gustave Flaubert, George
Sand acknowledged that ‘[o]ne must write for all those who long to read and
who can profit by good reading. So, one must go straight to the highest
morality that one can find in oneself and make no mystery about the valu-
able moral sense in one’s work’ (in Allott 1959, 95).
8. Whilst this aspect of the rhetoric around the moral justification of the
imperial enterprise falls beyond the scope of the present study, it is worth
mentioning that there was also a powerful religious component in the pro-
colonisation arguments (Lindsay 1981; Brooks and Faulkner 1996, 15–6).
9. From the poem ‘The White Man’s Burden’, reprinted in Brooks and Faulkner
(1996, 307).
10. We are grateful to Anna Upchurch for pointing us in the direction of
Viswanathan’s interesting essay.
11. Van Krieken (1999, 297) points us towards a gap in the academic literature
investigating ‘the extent to which “civilizing offensives,” the self-conscious
attempts to bring about “civilization,” have revolved around essentially vio-
lent policies and practices’.
12. The question of cultural diversity has become increasingly central to British
cultural policy debates since the introduction of equal opportunities legisla-
tion in the 1970s, and gained further momentum after the Race Relations
Amendment Act of 2000 (Graves 2003). As a result of such developments,
cultural diversity policies and related issues of access have become increas-
ingly central themes in the rhetoric of both the government and the arts
funding bodies (see Jermyn and Desai 2000). ACE’s most recent manifesto
document Ambitions for the Arts (2003), for instance, repeatedly reiterates
the centrality of the principle of cultural diversity to the organisation’s
work. As the document states on page 6: ‘We want cultural diversity to be a
central value in our work, running through all our programmes and rela-
tionships.’ Similar developments have taken place throughout the West.

7 Political Instrument
1. Quoted in DeRose Evans (1992, 7).
2. The use of culture for explicitly political and propagandistic purposes, how-
ever, is far from being an exclusive feature of the Fascist and Nazi regimes,
for – as the preceding discussion has shown – this is a recurring occurrence
in political life, especially within non-democratic regimes. The arts, there-
fore, were also central to other European totalitarian political regimes, the
Soviet Union being an obvious example. Unsurprisingly, then, Stalin
dubbed writers ‘engineers of the soul’ (in Debreczeny 1997, 3).
3. Mussolini’s exact words were: ‘Non si può governare ignorando l’arte e gli
artisti [...] In un paese come l’Italia sarebbe deficiente un governo che si dis-
interessasse dell’arte e degli artisti.’ The translation above is the authors’.
4. Indeed, another important aspect of this harnessing of culture for govern-
mental purposes is, according to Bennett (1992, 400), the fact that the
212 Notes

environment where exposure to culture takes place is viewed as a more

powerful influence than the art itself. Hence, the creation of the museum as
a space thought out so as to ensure not just the maximum visibility of the
artworks, but the visibility of each visitor to his fellow museum-goers. This,
in turn, would endow individuals with enhanced capacity for self-monitoring
and self-regulation (which are ultimately the mechanisms through which
governmental power operates).
5. Such evangelical tones are by no means exceptional nor rare – they are, how-
ever, problematical on many accounts, as becomes clear in consideration of
the fact that a profound anti-Semitism runs through much of Garaudy’s writ-
ings. In 1998, he was found guilty of Holocaust denial and racial defamation
by a French court, thus moving one, inevitably, to wonder about the kind of
social transformations that he hoped books would help to bring about,
reminding us once again of the extent to which the facile ‘rhetoric of trans-
formation’ that abounds in cultural and policy dabates has a disturbing, if
neglected, dimension. Details of the legal proceedings in which Garaudy was
involved can be found in a press release issued in July 2003 by the European
Courts of Human Rights (to which Garaudy appealed, unsuccessfully): http://
www.echr.coe.int/eng/Press/2003/july/Decision GaraudyvFrance4July2003.
htm (accessed 22 July 2007).
6. Nor by cultural critics for that matter, as the earlier discussion of Adorno’s
views on literary commitment have already shown.
7. This view can be summarised by the words of the American critic Gerald
Rabkin: ‘The problem of commitment arises when the artist is committed
to values or actions extrinsic to the immediate concerns of his art, when
the moral urgency of outside imperatives forces him as an artist into non-
aesthetic areas of consideration’ (in Caute 1971, 34).
8. As Michael Hanne (1996, 15) explains: ‘the telling of a different kind of story
(often a previously untold story) will trigger the telling of other stories of the
same kind and a new, highly charged consciousness and solidarity will be
created on the basis of the aggregation of similar stories, which results in a
degree of empowerment of people who previously saw themselves as isolated
and powerless.’

8 Social Stratification and Identity Construction

1. As Alan Swingewood (1998, 31) explains, ‘although critical of the holistic
tendency of Marxism, Simmel clearly regarded his own contribution as a sup-
plement, not an alternative, to Marx’s historical social theory’.
2. A classical example of this type of study is Norbert Elias’s (1994) influential
book entitled The Civilizing Process, which focuses, as Elias himself explains,
on ‘modes of behaviour considered typical of Western civilised man’
(p. xi).
3. Whilst only a limited proportion of the middle classes regularly experiences
the arts, recent data on arts participation and attendance collected, in England,
by the Arts Council confirms that professionals (indeed, the middle classes) are
consistently more involved in all the cultural activities included in the survey
than working class or unemployed individuals (ACE 2004).
 Notes 213

9 Autonomy of the Arts and Rejection

of Instrumentality
1. These ‘moral considerations’ are here taken to encompass political ones too,
since, as Carroll (1996, 223) observes, quite often when politics are discussed
with reference to art, ‘the politics in question are generally of the sort that is
underwritten by a moral agenda’.
2. Carroll (1996) further distinguishes between the positions of ‘radical’ and
‘moderate’ autonomism: ‘The radical autonomist maintains that moral dis-
cussions and evaluation is never appropriate with respect to any artwork. The
moderate autonomist maintains only that the aesthetic dimension of art-
works is autonomous. This grants that artworks (at least some of them) may
be evaluated morally as well as aesthetically, but contends that the moral
evaluation of the artwork is never relevant to its aesthetic evaluation,. The
moral dimension of an artwork, when it possesses one, is strictly independ-
ent of the aesthetic dimension’ (p. 231).
3. The degree to which this identification of Kant as an ‘autonomist’ is fully
justified on the grounds of the arguments put forward in the Critique of
Judgement is at the centre of a complex debate, to which the present discus-
sion cannot do full justice. For an exhaustive discussion of the ‘autonomist’
component of Kantian thought and the relationship between his aesthetic
ideas and the notion of social communication (that is never defined in Kant’s
writing), see Haskins 1989.
4. Geir Vestheim (1994, 65) defines ‘instrumental cultural policy’ as the ten-
dency ‘to use cultural ventures and cultural investments as a means or instru-
ment to attain goals in other than cultural areas’.
5. This more historically solid reconstruction of the origin of the art for art’s
sake theory is discussed in Egan (1921), Wilcox (1953) and Bell-Villada (1996),
on whose accounts this section of the chapter is largely based.
6. Wilcox’s observation is indeed confirmed by the fact that an alternative label
for the theories being discussed here is ‘aestheticism’, and their proponents
in nineteenth-century England were referred to – albeit derisively – as ‘aes-
thetes’ (Chai 1990).
7. De Staël was by no means alone in this process of diffusion cum misinterpre-
tation and simplification of Kantian aesthetic principles. For instance, the
French academic and philosopher Victor Cousin – who was for a long time
credited with having coined the expression l’art pour l’art, and whose lectures
were heavily indebted to German philosophy – is another central personality
in this process (see Bell-Villada 1996, 37–40).
8. That these were matters of lively debate among writers and artists them-
selves is proven by a letter that George Sand wrote back to Flaubert a few
years afterwards, where she continues their discussion on this topic. Here
Sand asks her fellow writer: ‘I know you disapprove of the intervention of
personal doctrine in literature. Are you right? Isn’t this lack of conviction
rather than aesthetic principle? One can’t have any real philosophy without
it coming to light’ (in Allott 1959, 95). As Chapter 6 has shown, George Sand
subscribed to the view that art has a moralising potential, and that precisely
for this reason, the artist accepts a heavy burden of moral responsibility as
part of his craft.
214 Notes

9. The essay referred to here is included in the already cited anthology of

Brecht’s writings collated and translated by John Willett under the title
‘Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction’; however, this section draws
on the translation of the same piece by Edith Anderson (referred to as Brecht
1961 and published with the title ‘Theatre for Learning’), on the grounds of
the better clarity and fluidity of Anderson’s English version.

Conclusion
1. John Tusa (2000; 2002 and 2007) and Andrew Brighton (1999 and 2006)
represent typical examples of this position in the British context.
2. Nevertheless, as Isaiah Berlin (1969, 4) compellingly explains, even what is
no longer relevant is crucial to a historical perspective: ‘The historical
approach is inescapable: the very sense of contrast and dissimilarity with
which the past affects us provides the only relevant background against
which the features peculiar to our own experiences stand out in sufficient
relief to be adequately discerned and described.’
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Index

Please note that for entries referring to end of chapter notes, the page number
is followed by the number indicating the note in which the information is to
be found and page numbers in bold indicate the part of the book when the
item in question is discussed extensively.

abreaction, 86 theory of, 177–86

Adorno, Theodor W. (1903–1969), art therapy, 87, 93, 102–5, 207
74–5, 200 n. 16, 204 n. 30, 212 n. 6 artists, 1, 3, 4, 17, 20, 29, 37, 42–3, 63,
aesthetic experience, 6, 7, 21, 72, 85, 67, 76, 89, 95, 99, 127, 128, 133,
92, 94, 99, 121, 173–4, 199 n. 8 144, 145, 147–8, 156, 165–6, 183,
aesthetic encounter, see aesthetic 186–7, 188–9, 210 n. 3, 212 n. 7,
experience 213 n. 8
Aestheticism, 177, 182, 183, 213 n. 6 ‘hierophantic’ view of, 132–3
see also under art for art’s sake arts
Alighieri, Dante (1265–1321), 112, advocacy, 6, 10, 11
137, 187 autonomy of, see art for art’s sake
Aristotle civilising power of, 26, 27, 31, 69,
Nicomachean Ethics, 79, 84 73, 76, 111, 124–7, 130–3,
Poetics, 79–80, 84, 88–90, 92, 107, 136–9, 141–3, 145, 153–5, 169,
108, 109, 124, 192, 205 n. 2 191, 193, 211 n. 11, 212 n. 2
Politics, 79, 83 crisis of, 4–5
Rhetorics, 79 definitional problems, 16–20
Arndt, Johann (1555–1621), 116 distracting power of, 42
Arnold, Matthew (1822–1888), and education, 1–2, 4, 7, 8, 14, 19,
10, 14, 21, 27, 28, 134–6, 138, 28, 33, 35, 45–6, 53, 55, 69, 81,
200 n. 14 89, 108, 109, 112–13, 115–23,
Culture and Anarchy, 135–6 125, 127, 128, 137, 138, 150,
art 170–1, 172, 179, 185, 186, 191,
classical definition of, 19 196 n. 2, 199 n. 3, 203 n. 20
concept of, 20–4, 28–30 and evolution, 101–2, 165–6,
essentialist definitions of, 17, 19, 201 n. 6
188 n. 5 formative power, see under
‘high’, see culture, high bildung
institutional definitions of, 17–19, ‘high’, see culture, high
199 n. 5 impact studies, 6–7, 197 n. 11
and the market, 131, 183, 210 n. 3 instrumental value, 7–8, 21, 80,
‘popular’, see culture, popular 146, 152–3, 155, 189–90, 194,
‘uselessness’ of, 72, 122, 129, 179, 197 n. 13
181, 182–4, 188 intrinsic value, 7, 17, 34, 120, 189,
see also arts 197 n. 14
art for art’s sake participation, 7, 34, 80, 102, 149,
in cultural policy, 8, 189, 197 n. 14, 172, 173, 175, 208 n. 13,
213 n. 5 212 n. 3

235
236 Index

arts – continued Bloom, Harold (1930–), 187, 204 n. 32

and pleasure, 20, 85, 92–7, 100, Boal, Augusto (1931–), 88
106, 108, 109–10, 111, 112, 114, Boccaccio, Giovanni (1313–1375),
125, 127, 129, 130, 132, 159, 112, 126
171, 178–9, 182, 186, 208 n. 1 Bourdieu, Pierre (1930–2002), 38,
and 3, 214 n. 9 165, 171–2, 174, 175
and political propaganda, 54, Distinction, 171–2, 174
146–51, 164, 193 Brecht, Bertolt (1898–1956), 74,
‘popular’, see culture, popular 161–2, 186, 208 n. 1, 214 n. 9
and social change, 8, 146, 158, 163, Brenton, Howard (1942–), 163
164, 188, 197 n. 13, 212 n. 5 Breuer, Joseph (1842–1925), 86,
as a source of corruption, 41–2, 206 n. 12
43, 53–68, 69, 147, 192, British Board for Film Classification,
202 n. 16 55, 64, 192, 202 n. 13, 203 n. 23
as a source of knowledge, 43, 44, British Museum, the, 154
109, 112–14, 121, 125, 135, Bruni, Leonardo (1374–1444), 112,
201 n. 6 and 7 125, 178
as unreliable source of knowledge,
40, 42–53, 69, 157 Calvin, John (1509–1564), 177
therapeutic powers, 83, 85–8, 93, Carey, John (1934–), 18, 33, 75, 151
94, 102–6, 133, 206 n. 13, 207 The Intellectuals and the Masses, 33
transformative powers, 2–4, 6, 31, What Good Are the Arts?, 18, 75, 151
54, 104, 194 Carroll, Noël, 45, 46, 50, 176, 213
see also art Cassirer, Ernst (1874–1945), 84–5,
arts councils 120–1, 208 n. 3
Arts Council England, 3, 4, 27, Castiglione, Baldassar (1478–1529), 125
144–5, 197 n. 11, 198 n. 16 and catharsis
19, 211 n. 12, 212 n. 3 and 12 Aristotle’s definition of, 80–1
Arts Council Korea, 3 emotional, 83–4, 85
Canada Council for the Arts, 3, 6 intellectual, 88–90, 108
International Federation of Arts as purgation, 80, 81–3, 85, 141,
Councils and Cultural Agencies 205 n. 4, 208 n. 1
(IFACCA), 1 therapeutic interpretation, 83,
Scottish Arts Council, 197 n. 11 85–6, 87, 88, 103
censorship, 54–5, 192, 199 n. 9
Baudelaire, Charles (1821–1867), 43, Cicero (104–43 BC), 109–10, 208 n. 2
137 civilisation
Baudrillard, Jean (1929–2007), 52–3 concept of, 25–6
Bauman, Zygmunt (1925–), 53, 210 Rousseau’s views on, 58–60
beauty, 69, 70, 94, 97, 120, 129, 131, Coetzee, John Maxwell (1940–),
135, 136, 140, 154, 166, 178, 179, 159–60
181, 182, 199 n. 8, 208 n. 3 Collier, Jeremy (1650–1726), 59
Bennett, Tony, 146, 151–3, 155, 172, colonialism, 26, 29, 31, 77, 141–5,
211 n. 4 159, 193
Berlin, Isaiah (1909–1997), 214 n. 2 ‘white man’s burden’, 142
bibliotherapy, 105, 207 n. 10 and 11 Constant, Benjamin (1767–1830), 180,
bildung, 44, 115–20, 121, 123, 181
209 n. 11, 210 n. 12 Cousin, Victor (1792–1867), 180,
bildungsroman, 118 213 n. 7
 Index 237

creative industries, 2, 3, 196 n. 1 Eliot, Thomas Stearns (1888–1965),

and 3 14, 33, 138, 167
Csikszentmihaly, Mihaly, 77, 101 Notes towards the Definition of
cultural capital, 101, 172–3 Culture, 167
cultural diversity, 10, 144–5, Enlightenment, 25, 26, 74, 117,
211 n. 12 127–8, 166, 200 n. 11 and 15
cultural history, 13, 24, 34–7, 152, philosophes, 127–8, 166
198 n. 1, 199 n. 4 Eurocentrism
see also intellectual history avoidance of, 30–1
cultural policy, 8, 25, 27, 31, 134, 189, concept of, 25–6, 27, 29
191, 193, 194, 197 n. 13 and 14, evidence-based policy making, 5–7, 9,
203 n. 23, 210 n. 4, 211 n. 12, 11, 19
213 n. 4
and art for art’s sake, 8, 189, fascism, 10, 28, 31, 77, 146, 148–9,
197 n. 14, 213 n. 5 193, 210 n. 13, 211 n. 2
‘instrumental’, 8–9, 189–90, 194, fashion, 169–70, 196 n. 3
197 n. 13, 203 n. 13 and 23, fiction, 19, 22, 33, 46, 48–9, 66, 73,
213 n. 4 105, 157–8, 160, 207 n. 10
cultural relativism, 11, 18 and historiography, 22–3
culture Flaubert, Gustave (1821–1880), 33,
definition of, 16, 28–9 184, 211 n. 7, 213 n. 8
‘high’, 16, 19–21, 27–8, 29, 32–5, Foucault, Michel (1926–1984), 146,
76, 134, 149, 151, 152, 153, 172, 151–2, 200 n. 11
176, 201 n. 17 Forster, Edward Morgan (1879–1970),
‘low’, see popular 185–6
instrumental use of, see under Freud, Sigmund (1856–1939), 86–7,
cultural policy, instrumental 105
popular, 16, 18–19, 20, 32–5, 67, 173 Fulgentius (465–527), 112
Cumberland, Richard (1732–1811),
183 Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1900–2002),
97–8
Dacier, André (1651–1722), 82, 83, 86 Garaudy, Roger (1913–), 156, 212 n. 5
Daniello, Bernardino (c.1500–1565), Gautier, Théophile (1811–1872), 43,
113 180, 182
Danto, Arthur Coleman (1924–), 17, genius, 20, 101, 166
18, 72–3, 74, 204 n. 29 Gladstone, William Ewart
David, Jacques-Louis (1748–1825), 148 (1809–1898), 154
De l’Hospital, Michel (1506–1573), Godwin, George (1813–1888), 136
126 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
De Staël, Anne Louise Germaine (1749–1832), 10, 64, 90, 116,
(‘Madame de Staël’, 1766–1817), 118, 119, 133, 156, 203 n. 24
181, 182, 213 n. 7 The Sorrows of Young Werther, 64–5,
Della Casa, Giovanni (1503–1556), 118, 156
205 n. 7 Gosson, Stephen (1554–1624), 58,
Dewey, John (1859–1952), 98–9, 126
206 n. 3 governmentalisation of culture, 146,
151–2, 155, 211 n. 4, 212 n. 4
Eagleton, Terry, 15, 216 Gramsci, Antonio (1891–1937), 120,
Eliot, George (1819–1880), 30, 155–6 143, 170, 210 n. 3
238 Index

Grass, Günter (1927–), 156 Mass Civilisation and Minority

Greenwood, Thomas (1851–1908), Culture, 137
153–4 Leibniz, Gottfried (1646–1716), 117
Liberal Humanism, 27–9, 30, 134,
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 187, 200 n. 15
(1770–1831), 74, 84, 93, 114–15, literature, 5, 14–15, 22–3, 33, 56, 66,
117, 209 n. 10 69, 74, 104, 105, 111–14, 124,
Hemingway, Ernest (1899–1961), 126, 133, 138, 140, 142–3, 150,
204 n. 31 156, 177, 178, 184, 199 n. 3,
Herder, Gottfried Johann 204 n. 30, 209 n. 6 and 7,
(1744–1803), 116, 117, 119 209 n. 8, 211 n. 7, 213 n. 8
history, discipline of, 22 de témoignage, 160
Hitler, Adolf (1889–1945), 75–6, 150 and knowledge, 43–52, 109–10,
Mein Kampf, 76, 150 201 n. 7
Horace (65–8 BC), 108, 109–11, 113, novel, the, 1, 16, 29, 38, 45, 47–8,
122, 124–5, 130, 131, 193, 51, 68, 114, 118–19, 139–41,
208 n. 2 and 3, 209 n. 8 146, 155–61, 164, 167, 182, 184,
Horne, Richard Henry (1803–1884), 196 n. 1, 211 n. 7
155 therapeutic powers of, see art
Huizinga, Johan (1872–1945), 99–100, therapy; see under
206 n. 4 bibliotherapy; poetry
Humboldt, Alexander von Lodge, Thomas (c.1558–1621), 126
(1767–1835), 116, 117–18 Lukács, György (1885–1971), 140–1

industrialisation, 131, 134, 183 Maggi, Vincenzo (1498–1564), 82

intellectual history, 10–11, 13, 37, Mamet, David (1947–), 100–1, 188–9
199 n. 4 Marx, Karl (1818–1883), 167, 168,
see also cultural history 212 n. 8
intellectuals, 13, 15–16, 33, 34, 166–7, McGrath, John (1935–2002),
199 n. 3, 209 n. 8, 210 n. 2 163–4
Milton, John (1608–1674), 84, 86,
jazz, 34, 67 206 n. 11, 208 n. 4
Jevons, William Stanley (1835–1882), Minturno, Antonio (c.1500–1574),
137, 153, 155 113
Jowell, Tessa, 8–9 Moreno, Jacob L. (1889–1974), 87,
206 n. 13
Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804), 92–3, Moritz, Karl Philip (1724–1804),
129, 178–80, 181, 213 n. 3 179
and art for art’s sake, 180–1 Morris, William (1834–1896), 96–7,
Critique of Judgement, 92, 129, 178, 206 n. 2
181, 213 n. 3 music, 3, 4, 46, 64, 67, 96, 100–1, 105,
Kierkegaard, Søren (1813–1855), 70–1 137, 139, 196 n. 1 and 3, 202 n. 8,
Kipling, Rudyard (1865–1936), 142 206 n. 4, 207 n. 5
Mussolini, Benito (1883–1945),
Lawrence, David Herbert (1864–1918), 148–9, 211 n. 3
33, 166–7
Leavis, Frank Raymond (1895–1978), National Gallery, the, 154
14, 29, 33, 137–9 Nazism, 10, 31, 75–6, 146, 148–51,
The Great Tradition, 29 160, 193, 211 n. 2
 Index 239

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm Rousseau, Jean-Jacques

(1844–1900), 33, 182 (1712–1778), 59–64, 71, 73,
Nussbaum, Martha (1947–), 19, 89–90, 203 n. 20 and 22
139–40, 206 n. 15, 211 n. 7 Ruskin, John (1819–1900), 14, 68–9

Orwell, George (1903–1950), 146 St Augustine (354–430), 55, 56, 57,

192, 209 n. 7
Petrarca, Francesco (1304–1374), 112 Confessions, 57
Piccolomini, Aeneas Sylvius St Cesarius (c.470–542), 56
(1405–1464), 112–13 St Cyprian of Carthage (c.200–258),
Plato (428/427–348/347 BC), 11, 19, 41, 55
40–3, 53–5, 56, 59, 60, 61, 64, 66, St Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), 177
67, 68, 79, 88, 89, 94, 107, 111, Salvianus (fifth century), 56
124, 147, 187, 192, 193, 194, Sand, George (1804–1876), 184,
199 n. 9, 201 n. 19, 205 n. 1, 211 n. 7, 213 n. 8
209 n. 6 Santayana, George (1863–1952),
Phaedrus, 89 208 n. 3
Republic, 41–3, 54–5, 107, 111, 192, Sartre, Jean Paul (1905–1980), 74
194 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph
poetry, 19, 38, 40, 41–3, 46, 47, 53–5, (1775–1854), 180, 209 n. 9
68, 74, 78, 79–80, 89, 91, 100, Schiller, Friedrich (1759–1805),
103–5, 107–13, 122, 124–5, 126, 10, 27, 69–70, 116, 119–20,
127, 130–45, 147, 178, 182, 186, 133, 179
192, 196 n. 1, 199 n. 9, 201 n. 19, On the Aesthetic Education of Man,
205 n. 1, 208, 209, 210 69–70, 119, 179
allegorical interpretation of, Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788–1860),
111–12, 125, 126, 177, 192 93–6, 206 n. 1
therapeutic powers of, 103–5, Scott, Walter, Sir (1771–1832),
207 n. 10 184
Pope-Hennessy, John (1913–1994), Scruton, Roger (1947–), 129, 139
187 secularisation, 27, 59, 117, 203 n. 17
psychodrama, 87, 206 n. 13 Shee, Martin Archer, Sir (1769–1850),
Purcell, James, 198 n. 17 154
Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792–1822),
Quatremère de Quincy, Antoine 111, 132–3, 166, 210 n. 2 and 4
(1755–1849), 128 Sidney, Philip (1554–1586), 109, 113,
126
Read, Herbert (1893–1968), 121–2 Simmel, George (1858–1918), 165,
Renaissance, 25, 26, 29, 35, 40, 74, 79, 167, 168, 169–70, 171, 172, 175,
82, 84, 86, 108, 111–14, 125–7, 212 n. 1
141, 177, 192, 205 n. 6, 206 n. 9, social contagion, see Werther effect
208 n. 3, 209 n. 5 and 6 social engineering, 10, 146, 149,
Italian theorists, see under individual 151–3
names Spender, Stephen (1909–1995), 122,
Robortelli, Francesco (1516–1567), 82 186–7
Romantic poets, see under individual Stanislavsky, Costantin (1863–1938),
names 87–8, 206 n. 14
Romanticism, 10, 21, 27, 108, 130–4, Steiner, George (1929–), 73–4
166, 183, 206 n. 1, 210 n. 2 Stendhal (1783–1842), 184
240 Index

Strabo (c.63–4BC–AD 24), 110 prejudice against, 40, 41, 55–64,

Symonds, John Addington (1840–1893), 68, 202 n. 15 and 16
141 Tolstoy, Leo (1828–1910), 49, 71–2,
204 n. 28
Tasso, Torquato (1544–1595), Trapp, John (1679–1747), 83
208 n. 4 Tusa, John (1936–), 8, 189–90, 195
taste, 33, 35, 69, 70, 139, 154, 165, TV, see television
169–73, 175, 181
as refinement, 165, 169–73, 175 Valéry, Paul (1871–1945), 68
Tatian (c.110–c.180), 55, 56, 57
television, 32, 52, 53, 66, 77, 163, 164, Weber, Max (1864–1920), 165, 167,
196 n. 3, 207 n. 5 168–9, 171, 175
Tertullian (c.160–c.225), 55, 56, 57 Werther effect, 35, 64–6
theatre, 16, 19, 40, 41–2, 54–6, 80–5, Whitman, Walt (1819–1892), 133, 136
87–8, 91, 101, 102, 107, 111, 124, Wilde, Oscar (1854–1900), 122, 177,
125, 126–7, 146, 155, 173, 177, 182
186, 188, 192, 195, 201 n. 19, Williams, Raymond (1921–1988),
205 n. 3 and 7, 206 n. 13, 13–15, 133
208 n. 1 Culture and Society, 13, 14, 133
‘epic’, 161–2 Wordsworth, William (1770–1850),
and politics, 146–7, 161–4 130–2, 133, 166, 210 n. 4