Eliot Deutsch

> Ce livre se lit comme un texte philosophique occidental universitaire et présente l’Advaïta d’un point de vue analytique objectif. Cela pourrait avoir tendance à en détourner nombre de lecteurs potentiels mais ce ne devrait pas être le cas. Alors qu’il peut sembler aride à certains moments et que sa lecture nécessite quelques efforts, il présente quelques concepts difficiles de façon très claire et c’est un ajout essentiel si vous voulez une bibliothèque de textes-clefs sur cette philosophie.
--José Le Roy… (mais)

Eliot Deutsch is a philosopher who views art as being at the very core of culture and society. In this collection of thirteen short essays, Deutsche brings his rich background in comparative philosophy, especially Chinese and Islam, as he speaks on topics of interest to any serious student of the subject: the nature of art, imitation, expression and aesthetic experience. There are also essays on several specific art forms: visual arts, poetry, dance architecture and music as well as essays addressing art’s connection to truth, morality and religion. To provide some Eliot Deutsch rasa, below are a few of my observations along with his.

When approaching the question ‘What is Art?’ Deutsch acknowledges any answer is difficult to formulate since we are obliged to consider the ways art exists within a culture and how culture shapes the very terms by which art is evaluated. For example, if we are viewing art from the Kwakwaka of Western Canada, we can’t simply project our modern values and notions onto these objects; we will have to make a commitment to become familiar with the Kwakwaka culture. As the author puts it, “The aesthetic object is constituted not just by what is seen but by how it is seen – that is, by what it is seen as – which depends partly on its whole milieu, including the contexts of perception and various things that we know or think we know.”

According to Deutsch, to know art is to actively participate in it, to come to know it on its own terms. Thus, in a way, coming to know art is like coming to know another person in the sense that we have to open ourselves up, to become vulnerable, to be willing to be moved and possibly to be changed. I would suspect many people reading this can relate. I know myself there have been times when I have been not only moved but shaken by my encounters with art, for instance my viewing the film Naked Lunch, watching an intense, hyper-physical performance of Eugène Ionesco’s play, Rhinoceros, or more recently, reading the tales of terror penned by Thomas Ligotti.

Imitation and representation (verisimilitude being one version of representation) are integral to art, but what exactly does it mean to imitate or represent? Take for example dancers representing sunlight and rain in their dance. Dancers/choreographers can be receptive to what they experience in nature but they are certainly not passive - creative imagination is very much at play here; there isn’t a simple copying. Along with this, artists must be free and open since the things of nature have a certain rightness and integrity and if an artist is going to represent or imitate they have to let those objects speak to them. For me, the artist who really comes to mind as someone who dedicated years to opening himself to simple objects is Giorgio Morandi.


Throughout the chapters, Deutsch draws on a number of sources to elucidate and explore his ideas, including such major figures as Plato, Aristotle, Vasari, Bernard of Clairvaux, G.F.W. Hegel, Ludwig Wittgenstein and a number of modern aestheticians: Frank Burch Brown, Roland Barthes, Thodor Adorno, Morris Weitz, Maurice Mandelbauum, George Dickie, Arthur Danto, Richard Wolheim. But through it all, Eliot Deutsch makes it clear how art is its own reality and how art can help us to see, really see the world, particularly if we emphatically embrace it, allowing ourselves to appreciate its beauty from the inside.… (mais)

Eliot Deutsch is a philosopher who views art as being at the very core of culture and society. In this collection of thirteen short essays, Deutsche brings his rich background in comparative philosophy, especially Chinese and Islam, as he speaks on topics of interest to any serious student of the subject: the nature of art, imitation, expression and aesthetic experience. There are also essays on several specific art forms: visual arts, poetry, dance architecture and music as well as essays addressing art’s connection to truth, morality and religion. To provide some Eliot Deutsch rasa, below are a few of my observations along with his.

When approaching the question ‘What is Art?’ Deutsch acknowledges any answer is difficult to formulate since we are obliged to consider the ways art exists within a culture and how culture shapes the very terms by which art is evaluated. For example, if we are viewing art from the Kwakwaka of Western Canada, we can’t simply project our modern values and notions onto these objects; we will have to make a commitment to become familiar with the Kwakwaka culture. As the author puts it, “The aesthetic object is constituted not just by what is seen but by how it is seen – that is, by what it is seen as – which depends partly on its whole milieu, including the contexts of perception and various things that we know or think we know.”

According to Deutsch, to know art is to actively participate in it, to come to know it on its own terms. Thus, in a way, coming to know art is like coming to know another person in the sense that we have to open ourselves up, to become vulnerable, to be willing to be moved and possibly to be changed. I would suspect many people reading this can relate. I know myself there have been times when I have been not only moved but shaken by my encounters with art, for instance my viewing the film Naked Lunch, watching an intense, hyper-physical performance of Eugène Ionesco’s play, Rhinoceros, or more recently, reading the tales of terror penned by Thomas Ligotti.

Imitation and representation (verisimilitude being one version of representation) are integral to art, but what exactly does it mean to imitate or represent? Take for example dancers representing sunlight and rain in their dance. Dancers/choreographers can be receptive to what they experience in nature but they are certainly not passive - creative imagination is very much at play here; there isn’t a simple copying. Along with this, artists must be free and open since the things of nature have a certain rightness and integrity and if an artist is going to represent or imitate they have to let those objects speak to them. For me, the artist who really comes to mind as someone who dedicated years to opening himself to simple objects is Giorgio Morandi.


Throughout the chapters, Deutsch draws on a number of sources to elucidate and explore his ideas, including such major figures as Plato, Aristotle, Vasari, Bernard of Clairvaux, G.F.W. Hegel, Ludwig Wittgenstein and a number of modern aestheticians: Frank Burch Brown, Roland Barthes, Thodor Adorno, Morris Weitz, Maurice Mandelbauum, George Dickie, Arthur Danto, Richard Wolheim. But through it all, Eliot Deutsch makes it clear how art is its own reality and how art can help us to see, really see the world, particularly if we emphatically embrace it, allowing ourselves to appreciate its beauty from the inside.


… (mais)