Wednesday, March 27, 2013


86. What market?

In the previous six items in this blog I discussed art, and there are six more to come. For the sake of variety, however, as an intermezzo I insert this item on markets. In the intense debate on markets following the present financial and economic crises there is a conceptual problem: when critics and supporters of markets quarrel, are they talking about the same thing?

In the widest sense, Markets are processes of supply and demand on the basis of private choice and initiative that yield selection of success by competition and institutions. Market places are places where supply and demand meet. A meeting of supply and demand is needed to enable division of labour, needed as a source of prosperity.

A much narrower notion of markets is the economist’s idealized model of perfect competition, where a mere mechanism of prices, without any government intervention, in laissez faire, yields an optimal allocation of scarce resources. It was an intellectual challenge to prove that analytically Adam Smith’s idea of the invisible hand could work. However, it has little, if anything, to do with reality. It is a fairy tale. I call it the mythmarket. Yet it has mesmerized generations of economists and policy makers influenced by them, who pursued it as an ideal, and a universal panacea, in spite of its obvious clash with reality, driven by the underlying political dream of laissez faire.

An alternative is to see markets more widely and to recognize their imperfections. They require a host of institutions to work. Competition is imperfect in many ways and requires a variety of government interventions. Markets do not satisfy all social goals and seriously damage a number of them. Many economists recognize this. Behind supply and demand there are social and psychological processes of choice and processes of production and innovation. Much of that requires collaboration, next to competition. Some economists recognize this. However, here collaboration is still driven entirely by self-interest. There is no room, economists think, for altruism or normativity that may be detrimental to material self-interest. In markets, altruistic firms would not survive. 

I disagree. As I argue elsewhere in this blog (items 46, 54), I think that the human being has an instinct for both self-interest for the sake of survival, and altruism for the sake of social legitimacy and cohesion, with a corresponding sense of normativity next to self-interest. Also, due to imperfect competition there is some room to make allowances for social responsibility.

There is more. In supply and demand there is not only trade, in transactions, but also interaction, in relations. Those not only have extrinsic value in generating material welfare but also intrinsic value. Labour also not only has extrinsic, instrumental value for the sake of income but also intrinsic value as part of the good life. Here, I adopt an ethic not only of utility but a wider virtue ethic of the good life, adopted from Aristotle, as argued earlier in this blog (item 39).

In sum, I propose a categorization of markets that is summarized in the scheme below.

                                     idealized market   cooperative market   social market   humane market
                        (the mythmarket)
competition                   yes                    yes                               yes                   yes
collaboration                 no                     yes                               yes                   yes
altruism/normativity       no                      no                                yes                   yes
intrinsic value                no                      no                                no                    yes

Still crucial in this wider notion of markets is the idea of maximum freedom, and hence variety, of choice and initiative. That is what makes it different from central planning. That element of ideology remains.

I plead for the humane market, not recognized by economists. Next to competition it includes collaboration, with a certain amount of altruism and normativity next to self-interest, and recognition of intrinsic value of labour and economic relations.
                        

Wednesday, March 20, 2013


85. Subjective and objective interplay

 In item 23 of this blog, on knowledge, I discussed the interaction between the inside, or the subjective, and the outside, or the objective. I proposed that forms of thought (the inside) affect how we perceive and interpret phenomena (the outside) but also develop in the process, so that in that sense the outside has a causal effect on the inside.

This entails that the subject and object are not separable, with a Cartesian subject objectively contemplating the object, as a bystander, but interact. How, if at all, does this fundamental issue connect with art?

The Chinese philosopher of art Wang Guowei (1877-1927) proposed to see art as interplay of the subjective and the objective (jingjie). First of all he indicates that play is part of art.

If both knowledge and art arise in interaction between the subjective and the objective, what does that say about the relation between knowledge and art? What is the difference between them, in this interaction? First of all, perhaps art is more playful, in interplay.

In the interplay of subjective and objective in art, observed phenomena, in nature or society, are infused with feelings, or, the other way around, feelings are expressed as phenomena in nature or society. In other words the one is used as a metaphor for the other.

Thus a lover may compare the loved one to ‘a summer’s day’. Anger or passion may be portrayed as a storm. Feelings may be portrayed as a fountain or as leaden weights on the soul, or as an uncontrollable horde rushing the mind.

In item 31, on invention, I discussed a cycle of invention, according to which new knowledge arises, along several stages, from applying the known in novel contexts where it meets its limitations, and next exploratory combinations are made, in reciprocation, of elements from existing knowledge and novel elements encountered in the novel context. That is also a matter of interplay between the subjective (existing knowledge) and the objective (the novel context). Here, metaphor is helpful, in seeing the one in terms of the other. Perhaps invention is where art and knowledge meet.

This also arises when people want to cross cognitive distance, to achieve mutual understanding and develop novelty, which is also a matter of making novel combinations, in this case between different subjects that meet as objects to each other, and seeing the one in terms of the other, as discussed in item 57.

This view of art is in tune with the view, proposed in the preceding item in this blog, of art as shifting meaning. That is what metaphors do.

So perhaps we can say that in playful interaction between the subjective and the objective art with its metaphors and shifts of meaning contributes to novelty, or yields an exercise for it, also in knowledge and in understanding. Perhaps art also plays a role in empathy between people, where there also is interaction between the subject and the other person encountered as an object. I will elaborate on that in later items in this blog. 

Thursday, March 14, 2013


84. The universal and the specific in art

One of the themes in this blog is that of the universal and the specific (or individual). I discussed their interplay, in which a universal is abstracted from the individual and its specific context, to carry what is derived from it to novel contexts. That is a mechanism of learning by generalization. In the novel context, the universal is confronted with the richness of specific, new details, where it may fail to work and may fall apart. If this happens in several contexts, it may be reconstructed, in the form of a novel universal in the making. I connected this process to the hermeneutic circle, discussed in item 36 and to a cycle of invention, discussed in item 31. What is the relation to art, if any?

In a paper for the Dutch Prince Claus fund (dedicated to preservation of cultural heritage) Charlotte Huygens discusses themes that are, I think, related to this.

One topic in the paper is how in art exhibitions, which serve to present new contexts, art works can obtain new, multiple interpretations. This is related to the theme of locality and globalization. At the Documenta Art Exhibition in 2012 ‘ … interaction of art works with the local environment … formed an integral part of the concept’. This localization of art produces a dialogue (or ‘polylogue’) with other places.

A second theme is the relation between universalized, globalized art, footloose across the world, exhibited mostly in developed countries, and locally embedded crafts still tied to a specific heritage. The challenge is to connect them better, as a feature of exhibitions, as occurred in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, with ‘its mission to encourage classical, craft-based art forms as a source of inspiration for contemporary creation …’. Such cross-fertilization may break through the ‘.. pitfall … that cultural heritage and craft is associated with non-Western countries, …. considered to be in the past, whereas contemporary art is associated with Western civilization’. 

A third theme is that of art as resistance to dictatorship and totalitarianism where individuals are subjugated or even sacrificed to universalized ideologies. I would add, however, resistance also to similarly subjugating dogmas of capitalism, such as a universalized, context-independent regime of markets.

The three themes come together, I think, as follows. First, universalized art can adopt new meanings by being embedded in novel contexts with their own localized art and craft. Second, the resulting contrasts can jolt universalized art into novel experiments and shifts, to produce the emergence of novel universals. Third, such infusion from local heritage and local variety, diverse individuality, can prevent universals from becoming totalitarian, a steamroller that squashes individuality and variety, where everything becomes a carbon copy, a clone, a McDonald burger. In this way art is part of the rebellion of the individual against the threat of existing universals and contributes to the emergence and thriving of novel ones.

In conclusion, the mixing and meeting of the global and the local, the universal and the individual, in art and culture, is a crucial part of maintaining the vitality of art itself and of humanistic society. 

Friday, March 8, 2013


83. Art and nature

What is the relation between art and nature? I think that the world making of art is partly inspired by nature and our evolution in it. Here I am not falling back on the old notion of art as representation of nature. The connection lies on a deeper level of ways of world making.

Is it surprising that colours and shapes in nature are mostly seen as beautiful, or do we find them beautiful because we have evolved among them, as a species and in our lives? Earlier in this blog I argued that like our bodies our cognitive make-up must in some way reflect success in evolution, in adaptation to the world, because without it we would not have survived. In item 29 of this blog I proposed that the most urgent adaptation was that to objects (food, predators, prey, obstacles, tools) and agents (friend and foe) moving and acting in time and space, and that this has formed our fundamental cognitive apparatus, yielding a object bias in our conceptualization of abstract notions such as happiness, love, meaning, etc. that are not at all like objects existing and moving in time and space.

I now propose that something similar is happening in aesthetic judgement. We find things beautiful that we have adapted to and that helped us to adapt. In addition to the colours and forms in nature that I mentioned, this would then include shapes and movements that helped us to survive, such as a strong or fertile body, agility perceived as grace, movement in space, rhythm of movement, etc. Perhaps that also explains our fascination with sports.

Another example is perhaps the ubiquity of the golden rule[1] in both nature and architecture, painting and sculpture. In nature it is found, for example, in the dimensions of a snail’s house. In architecture it is found, for example, in the proportion between windows on different floors of 17th century houses along canals in Amsterdam. What makes the canals so aesthetically pleasing is that while each house has its own shape of the gable, they share the golden proportion between the windows.

Some evidence of the instinctive application of the golden rule is the following. Once, I had an old house drastically restored by an architect friend. The structure consisted of two houses separated by a space that centuries ago was part of an alley between two rows of houses. The space was almost exactly square. The architect designed a glass roof over the space and somewhere in it a spiral stairway to a bridge connecting the first floors of the two houses. It was beautiful and I wondered whether by any chance that might have to do with the golden rule. I made measurements and found that the location of the stairway obeyed the golden rule in three dimensions (in the length and breadth of the space and in the point at which the steps along the stairway switched from pointing left to pointing right). I called the architect to tell him. He did not believe me and jumped in his car to come and confirm my measurements. He was astonished. It seems to have been part of his instinct.  



[1] The golden rule is defined as the proportion between two line sections a and b where a/b = b/(a + b). The solution of this little mathematical equation is that a/b is roughly equal to 0.62

Sunday, March 3, 2013


82. Evolution in nature and art

Are nature, or much of it, and art, or some of it, beautiful, or appealing, for the same or for different reasons?

I propose to consider the following idea: they are both the outcome of evolution, but in different ways. Evolution is characterized by more or less random, chaotic generation of trials that are put up to forces of selection. What survives is in harmony with its environment, until it is pushed aside by new novelty. Suppose that it is this harmony that appeals to us. Then we have a common ground for appreciation of nature and art. How would that work?

In nature, of course, novelty arises from genetic mutations, copying errors, and novel combinations of genes in chromosomal cross-over, and the selection environment in terms of food, predators, climate, wars, and illnesses decides survival (If you don’t recall this from school biology, never mind).

In art, I propose, it is ideas, or views, images, shapes or musical scores that arise mysteriously, chaotically and next may or may not survive the test of ‘making it work’, in craftsmanship and the struggle with matter, until what survives is in harmony with the sense of the artist. The harmony of a work of art that is ‘just right’.

The artist has to ruthlessly pursue that outcome. And if it is liked by others that is a bonus. Here, I think, artists set an example for the good life. If he/she temporarily or intermittently makes likeable, saleable art in order to survive, that is fine, but if he does not keep his standards there he/she is temporarily not an artist. Rembrandt frequently painted for money, but I am sure that there also he had his standards to keep.  

Now why would we appreciate such harmony arising from selection, in nature and art? Because that has contributed to our survival in evolution. If we had not developed such sense we might no longer be here. In order to survive you have to admire what has survived.

But if that is the case, would not the disturbance of order, in novelty that does not fit, or in a shift of selection environment that causes misfits, be distasteful, abhorrent? Yes, and indeed it often is. Novel art forms encounter hostility. Until they have managed to twist the selection environment to their advantage.