This subject notably fell in the philosophy test of the 2015 bac. See all the subjects of the 2015 bac.
Introduction
Introduction
You could introduce your essay with a quote or a reference to a literary work.
For example, Balzac’s short story Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu (The Unknown Masterpiece ) fits very well with this problematic of the meaning of the work. The description made there of the work, of what is art, in the case of painting, is particularly fine and adapted to the question of the meaning of the work. This problem is posed with all the more insistence, and even takes a dramatic turn, when Frenhofer, disappointed by the reaction of his disciples to the sight of his work, sets fire to his studio and dies.
Definitions
Work of art: the definition of a work of art would deserve a philosophical reflection of its own. This is what you could point out at the outset, and say that you were going to develop this definition throughout the assignment. However, it was good to already start understanding what is meant by a work of art. Kant defined it by saying already what it is not: “the product or consequence of art is distinguished as a work (opus) from the product of nature as an effect (effectus)”. The art distinguishes itself moreover from the craft, and from the science.
To make sense: To be logical, rational, in accordance with reason. But you could also play on the polysemy of the word “sense”, by explaining its different acceptations.
Always: this little word has all its importance in the subject: does the work of art have a meaning in all circumstances, whatever happens?
Problematic
Many issues were possible. We chose here to focus on the word “meaning”.
Is the work of art necessarily characterized by a logic? Is it not rather the characteristic of the work of art to make emerge the irrational one? How the work of art by this opening on the insane can it produce its own values which give it sense?
Plan
We will follow a dialectical plan, which is particularly adapted for this type of subject, of the form “has it” / “has it“. See development.
Development
You could of course choose many other ways of approaching and answering the subject, there is not only one solution. Give in comments below your ideas, your plans, your comments.
I. The work of art makes us see reality, it produces truth, and therefore has a meaning
Aristotle in The Poetics posits the essential function of tragedy as that of catharsis: the purification of the passions.
For Hegel, the work of art is the expression of a period and a time, it says something about the period and the people.
For Marx, the work of art is a prism through which one can see the interests of the classes being expressed.
II. The work of art must be free of any interest, without necessarily evacuating completely the meaning
For Kant, the work of art must be disinterested. The beautiful is to be distinguished from the useful, the pleasant, and the true: there is no objective knowledge.
In The Birth of Tragedy, of Nietzsche, art is engaged in a fight against the truth. In The Twilight of the Idols: “When one excluded from art the goal to moralize and to improve the men, it does not still follow that art must be absolutely without end, without goal and deprived of direction“
III. The sense of the work of art resides only in the immaterial relation, freed from the rationality, that it implies
Bergson, to understand how the art makes see directly the reality, but to the condition of the disinterestedness: “The art is surely only a more direct vision of the reality.But this prureness of perception implies a rupture with the useful convention, an innate and specially localized disinterestedness of the sense or the conscience, finally a certain immateriality of the life” he writes in The Laughter.
Merleau-Ponty recalls the raw perception that is at stake in the work of art, the presence in the world that it constitutes, freed from the rational point of view. In L’Œil est l’esprit, he explains how the work of art offers the imaginary texture of reality to the eye.
Give your opinions, your plans, in the comments below. And feel free to check out the other topics/corrections:
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