Is Art Philosophy?

I haven't dabbled much in literary criticism since my college days, more than 30 years ago.  I hope to be saved from more dabbling, as what interests me in this essay are distinctions, not critical analyses.

I start making distinctions by noting that there is a subject, Aesthetics, which is the Philosophy of Art. As the name implies, Aesthetics is about sensibility, emotion or feeling. It is about thought to the extent that art provokes thought. This delimitation of the subject implies that works of art involve the senses. Whether it is cuisine, sculpture or drama, art is experienced as feelings, not primarily as concepts.

Philosophy and science, on the other hand, are primarily involve thoughts, not feelings; i.e., they are intellectual pursuits. One of the main purposes of philosophical activity is finding meaning in what is examined, which assumes language, ideas and an analytical attitude. Scientific work is largely about doing experiments and concocting theories that generate experiments. Unlike art, science does not focus on having feelings; rather, it measures whatever sensations we have (most often by using instruments). Scientific and philosophical works may be highly literate - that is, artistic - but that is purely a matter of the individual practitioner's skill. Thus, Plato was skillful in presenting the Socratic dialogues which may be read as art, not philosophy. Al Gore's Oscar winner, An Inconvenient Truth, engages the emotions by the use of rhetoric and visual arts, which helps to convince people that there is global warming. But most of the time it is apparent to the audience that the presentation has a small artistic content. Science films rarely get nominated for Oscars. When philosophy is at stake in art, it is indirectly so: the philosophical problem is presented as a life problem, or as a question in a pattern of behavior. We might wonder about the meaning of windmills in Don Quixote, or the Buddhist cycle of life in Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring. In those cases, the philosophical problems are raised by what the actors do, what we feel, and the patterns we think we see, not by any direct statement; the philosophy is secondary to the artistic content.

So, in art we are asked to emote, privately. In philosophy, we are asked to think. In science, like philosophy, we asked to think, but we are also asked to sense in a specific, public way.

Was William Shakespeare a philosopher? My answer is NO. His works often raise philosophical issues, most notoriously in Hamlet, but that is a secondary phenomenon. Mostly, we are supposed to have an experience by reading his sonnets, or watching his plays. Shakespeare arouses our emotions, and invites comparison of our lives, seen as plays, to his scenarios. But I have never heard it argued that Shakespeare was scientific; au contraire, his plays usually require the willing suspension of belief (cf. Aristotle Poetics). And, his works are rarely analytical. Richard II schemes and connives to become tyrant over England, and eventually is his own undoing, but we do not have a theory of history in that play. Nor do we have a theory of history or even of ethical necessity in Macbeth, who is doomed by his evil deeds. What happens to Macbeth is a story of his overweening ambition, and what those around him finally did about it. If there is any philosophy in the play, it is that, in the end, justice will triumph. Shakespeare leaves us with a feeling of certitude about good overcoming evil, but does not provide any reason for expecting it will actually happen to us.

Perhaps my experience of art is insufficient or pinched. While I often perceive a philosophical question or problem in artistic work, I seldom find any solution to what is presented. I think artists believe each of us will gain some insight into the problem through the work, but they are usually not interested in pursuing the matter further. So, while some artists are philosophers, and some philosophers are also artists, these are different genres that are not often combined. I conclude in the case of Shakespeare, that he was a pre-eminent artist who often embedded philosophical questions in his work. I do not know of anything that indicates that he ever pursued philosophy as such. Thus, I have no idea what it means to claim that Shakespeare was a philosopher.