A Reply
Hyman, Lawrence W.
Mr. Swan's distinction between the "order" in our everyday perception and the "disorder" aroused by art is compatible with my own statements. And I agree with him also in believing that...
...in the sense that desires are fulfilled in the perception itself...
...My answer, in brief, is that one can experience emotions which do not issue forth in action...
...The aesthetic experience is free from desire...
...Swan would want also, is one in which we are more than political animals...
...We see and feel life outside of our own immediate needs and desires at a level which transcends ordinary experience...
...Swan's distinction between the "order" in our everyday perception and the "disorder" aroused by art is compatible with my own statements...
...Conversely, those who look to literature for a moral purpose may very well neglect their responsibilities as citizens and use literature as a substitute for political action...
...Swan argues that there is no essential change: if we hate the man in reality, we will hate him in the novel or the play...
...And I agree with him also in believing that literature provides no special sort of knowledge...
...Swan's final point, I fail to see that nonaction in the aesthetic experience leads to nonaction in practical affairs...
...And the kind of society that I would want, and which I believe Mr...
...For when we fulfill our "desires in the perception itself," we add another dimension to our experience...
...Logically, one might even argue that a formalist, having no faith in the capacity of literature to move the reader in any particular direction, must fulfill his moral commitments by putting down his book and picking up a picket sign...
...Our disagreement, as I see it, is essentially over the question of what happens to our emotional response when we move from an actual event (where a man is threatening the child with a gun, to use our common example) to the artistic treatment of this event...
...John Dewey, Art As Experience, p. 254...
...And he further argues that the absence of such an emotion, which I find in the literary experience, implies "non-emotion," or "detached calm...
...However, the main point in my essay is not to bring out the weaknesses of the moralistic approach to litera ture, but to explore the possibility that even in the aesthetic experience itself there is a value, and a value that is particularly necessary for those with strong political and moral commitments...
...For if the novelist is at his best, he would make me go beyond my "highly ordered categories of perception" which I normally have, and force me to see the "villain" from the inside...
...The hatred I would have toward a fictional character would be of a different kind...
...As for Mr...
...Not absence of desire and thought but their thorough incorporation into perceptual experience characterizes the aesthetic experience...
...The hatred I would have in the real situation would make me try to stop the man...
...But vigorous and intelligent political action is necessary for this kind of society— and on this point I believe that Mr...
...Swan and I are in agreement...
Vol. 14 • November 1967 • No. 6
