Philosophy-RAG-demo/transcriptions/HoP 255 - Andreas Speer on Medieval Aesthetics.txt

 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the Philosophy Department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich, online at www.historyoffilosophy.net. Today's episode will be an interview about medieval aesthetics with Andreas Speer, who is the director of the Thomas Institute at the University of Cologne. Hi, Andreas. Hi, Peter. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure from me. Well, we're going to be talking about medieval aesthetics and that immediately raises a problem because the medieval's don't actually recognize aesthetics as a branch of philosophy alongside physics, ethics, metaphysics, etc. And that raises the question of where we should be looking for their ideas about aesthetics, if anywhere. Yeah. In general, this is not such an exception because there are other branches like, let's say, anthropology or if we talk about philosophy of mind, where we have also this kind of modern division of philosophy into branches and what we find in the Divisiones Philosophiae at this time. But there's some special case with aesthetics because maybe this field is much more designed from a 19th century perspective. And even in the treatment of medieval aesthetics, if you go to some classics like Eco's book or Asuntos' book on medieval aesthetics, they seem to take over uncritically the definition of Hegel's vorlesung, the aesthetic, that the subject of aesthetics is nothing but fine art. So we are really bound to it. But what shall we do? So my suggestion is, and what I did is, that we take a hermeneutical point of view. And that means that we start with the way how people experience this, what we call medieval art, because the perception is also the creation of the object, as we know. And let's start, for example, with our contemporary point of view and the reflections about it. But take the very same view and look how people at the time we call the Middle Ages are, you know, reflecting upon those works, the very same may be, we consider as art objects. So I call this the reconstructive hermeneutics of the experience of medieval art. So your idea is if we put it in an art museum today, and it was produced in the Middle Ages, then medieval aesthetics could be the study of what the medieval said about those things, maybe statues, architecture, stuff like that. Indeed. And we will find very, very interesting contexts. They are totally different from the theoretical context we take into consideration when we talk about those objects. Now, for example, we can, if you go here in Cologne, we are in Cologne, if you go into the Museum Schnütgen, which is one of the most famous museums of medieval art. And if we ask where we find them in a medieval period, we find them, for example, in the theoretical context in churches. So they are situated in a very different context. And this context also has its interpretation. So it's interpretive tools. And we can find then also reflections upon those objects in relation to the context where we can find them. I guess the same thing would be true for ancient art, actually. Yes. The statues that we put up in our museums, they stood in temples and they were religious objects. Yes. Right? Yes. And does that mean that if we're looking for remarks about aesthetics in the medieval period, we actually have to turn to liturgical literature or theology? For example, this is one of the most prominent fields where we can find those reflections. And this is even confirmed by the text you find usually in compendia on medieval aesthetic writings. And there they are mostly presented outside the context, so just as quotes. And you don't know where the quotes are from and what is the context, what is even the genus of the text. Let's start with one prominent example. And that is the writings of Abbessus Gérere and the Abbey of Saint-Denis, which is often taken as the model, the first model of a Gothic cathedral. Those writings, and this is what we discovered when we started the research and even doing then the critical edition on those texts, the most important text is structured according to the consecration, the retus of a church. So which is very interesting because first you see how the reflection on this art took place. Then also you get an idea of what medieval art in such a context is. This is much more performative than just located in a museum where you can go and watch it. You have to use it. You have to be part of it. This is also, when we think from a contemporary theory of aesthetics, a very interesting starting point and point of comparison instead of taking it in a kind of objective schema of what we call the history of the fine arts. Right, because they're not thinking of it primarily as an art object, they're thinking of it as a ritual object. But I suppose actually in a way we might think there's something right about that. So that we could even think about something like a painting that hangs in a museum as something that exists within a context that we interact with in a certain way. Yes, and we can see it in those writings that what's taking place is that indeed we find ways that people at this time consider special objects, special parts of art, examples of artwork, separate from the day-to-day things they were doing. So there is this kind of difference we can also see. But those differences are conceptualized in a different way than just the definition of oh, that's fine arts. Because you don't find, it is interesting, you don't find a notion like arspurchra. The idea we get from the 19th century and especially from this very powerful Hegelian tradition that we find the specific object of aesthetics at the intersection of art and beauty. This is not this overall idea which puts together our understanding on what we find when we are considering what the understanding of aesthetics or an aesthetic object is in a specific time. It's even not the case nowadays. So to a certain extent, this hermeneutical point of view on medieval art opens also a new or is connected, deeply connected with contemporary reflections upon what art is, which is not always fine art. So this opening of the understanding with respect to object and theory, what we find in contemporary aesthetic theory, I think we have to take this point of view if we would like to understand what in the medieval period is considered an aesthetic object, for example. Actually, I guess that a lot of the previous literature, so you mentioned Umberto Eco's book on medieval aesthetics, for example, a lot of this literature does focus on the concept of beauty. So what would you say if he or someone else came and said to you, well, no, hang on a second, we can think about medieval aesthetics as a kind of unified topic. And the topic is the philosophical reflection on beauty. Yeah. Isn't that a legitimate undertaking? It has some difficulties as well, because you have to consider where you find even the reflections on beauty. If we, for example, take Thomas Aquinas, who was always seen as one of the heroes in this business, as an example. As in so many other businesses. Yes, in many others. This is in particular one place which is very prominent, and this Trinitarian theology. So if you really look, locate, relocate the places, the reflections on beauty, one very prominent place is Trinitarian theology. Beauty as one of those appropriated names by which the relation between the father and the son is expressed. We have that in connection with this another place that is the tradition of the divine names in the Dionysian tradition, where the beauty shows up as one of the co-expressions of the good, bonum et pulchum. Beauty is one of the expressions how to understand the efficacy of goodness, like the light, like love, and so on. So this is one very prominent place. Maybe those are the two most prominent places and even what we call the transcendental beauty is located in the divine name discourse in connection with what we call the transcendental thought. But there the beauty hardly appears as a transcendental of its own. So this is a much weaker place, the reflections on the beauty, and it is not connected with reflecting, for example, a specific expression of doing art. If we are interested in this, then we have really to go into the different subject of writings, where the reflections on how to produce certain kind of artworks and make them perfect. So, for example, the Schedulativasarum Artium of the so-called Theophilus Presbyter, who as an author is not really well known and present. Maybe this is an author fiction, but we don't know it. But then we are talking about art. Maybe in addition to when we talk about the beauty, indeed, there is maybe another tradition which we can relate to the Victorines and maybe to Bonaventure. But this is then a follow up on what I said about the context of the beauty, because it is this neo-Platonic idea that you have the well-ordered cosmos. This is more a cosmological than an aesthetic approach. Now we have this well-ordered cosmos and all the stages of the cosmos as expressions of this well-orderedness, which is then in the Platonic tradition expressed in this very famous notion of the Calo Cagatia. That means that the goodness and the beauty go together and form this kind of harmonious cosmic order. But this is a very speculative notion and is hardly addressed to a concrete theory of an art object or an artwork. In fact, it almost seems diametrically opposed to that, because according to this theory of the transcendentals, everything that is, is good, beautiful, true, and whatever. So you have all these transcendental features. And in that sense, a stone lying in a field is as much an example of beauty as a statue or cathedral. Indeed. And this is a good point, because in this respect, the beauty is not discretive like in Hegel, because this is the first time maybe in the early Renaissance where even the name fine arts is coming up and where this is taken to single out a certain group of artwork from the very general understanding of art. Because until the 12th century, everything was art, which was produced by man. This techné on and fusé on opposition, what is natural and what is technical, or artwork in the very wide sense, this distinction coming up from Plato. And in this respect, art is not a very specific notion. It is even until the appearance of Aristotle covered all doctrinal and scientific approach as well as the more technical and day-to-day labor and crafts work, what one does. Do they even then have the notion in the medieval period of an artist in our sense? So what you were just saying is that there's this idea of art as techné, but of course that covers carpenters and shoemakers and so on. In fact, those are the classic examples. So would they have a distinct concept that they would apply, for example, to a sculptor or painter? I think we have to make a distinction until Aristotle appears on the scene. Until the 12th century, the concept of an artist is very wide. Even philosophy is taken as art of arts, as artium. So when we take the famous division of the arts in the Jugo of St. Victor's Diascolicon, one of the most prominent scholarly texts and even didactical texts in the 12th century, art covers everything. What is interesting in Jugo of St. Victor is that he even incorporates the mechanical arts among the philosophical arts. So we have then the traditional division with the theoretical and the practical arts into logic, but also then he talks about the mechanical arts as part of this. This is interesting, but the concept of the artist is a very general one. This is opposed to the creator and this is also a discourse on creativity, but a very general discourse on creativity. What is the divine artifacts and what is the human artifacts? The divine artifacts, which is infinite creativity, not depending from any context and material conditions whatsoever. What is the human artist doing? This famous dictum of Ars imitatou naturam, that the arts imitate the nature, also defines the constraints of the human creativity, which has to respect the given conditions. So this is very prominent and this concerns the entire human creativity. With Aristotle, we get this clear distinction between art and scientia, art and science. And here, this is the starting point in the early Renaissance, where you start to think about the specific value even of different arts. This is then when architecture, painting, sculpturing were singled out and you find it for the first time in the Campanile of the Duomo in Firenze, represented in a visual, iconic form and you can find it in the famous museum, I think by Giotto. Giotto made these three plates where he singled out and added to because they didn't have a very prominent place in former times. For example, in this famous Didas Calicon, architecture is just summarized under the armature. So, architecture is seen as part of armory. Although it's not even so prominent that it has a place of its own. It's part of armory in the very broad sense. This is as if he didn't know where else to put it or something. Yes. But here you can see that the reflection on art and craft are then starting to focus a kind of a canon of its own. I think the Aristotelian context have a lot to find the proper theoretical place of what art does. I guess also in Bonaventure, in the reduction of the arts to theology, drawing on here of Saint Victor, he also describes the mechanical arts as a kind of reflection of divine creativity. I think that's interesting because in a way it suggests a very kind of exalted role for even the humble artist, even the shoemaker, is in a way doing something that's a reflection or image of God's creative activity. But on the other hand, it seems that one difference between Renaissance art and medieval art is that with Renaissance art, it really makes a big difference who the individual artist is. So, if you think about maybe like Giotto, there's this sort of hand of the artist. And at least nowadays, we think it's very important that it's Giotto who painted this painting and that it's an expression of his individuality. And I guess that that's not so true in medieval art. Is that right? The first is the lack of sources we have, but we also find sources and reflections on individuality, mainly that, for example, the craftmen who did the stone work. So, they had the individual signs on the stone they made, for example. There are signs of individuality. So, they would literally put an insignia on what I made. Yes, yes. And at night, we have also expressions where, in fact, we have to make, at least starting from the Latin, the difference between the architectus and the magister operis. The architectus is mainly a speculative figure, just the one who was in charge, like the bishop, the abbot, and so on. And the true architect, the one who was really leading the stuff, this is the magister operis. And some of those, you find at least in the 12th, 13th century, you find also plates where they have some inscriptions, where you find some signs of this individuality. In general, indeed, the idea of a workspace, maybe take a cathedral workspace. And the most times they were working in the very same way and self-understanding until today. So, they are just part of this over-century building campaign, which is, to a certain extent, not bound to the individual, but to the group and to this tradition you are inscribing yourself, a little bit in the habit a commentator has, whose originality is only showing up in connection with the tradition he is entering. Actually, something I've talked about in a lot of episodes is the fact that there are these anonymous commentaries on Aristotle and other texts, and the anonymous artists who work on the cathedrals are almost like the same thing. And indeed, there is a sign of, there is a change of Zep's perception, because cutting off this tradition, I think this is something that belongs very much to the self-definition of the Renaissance. The Renaissance as a conceptual framework. So think of Petrarch and those who initiated this and invented the Middle Ages, because the Middle Ages are an invention. And nobody in the Middle Ages thought ever to live in the Middle Ages. They were just living in the continuity with the old ancient tradition and commanding on this and sticking together. Just imagining them saying to each other, boy, I can't wait for the Middle Ages to be over. Yeah, it's impossible. Because it is an invention which has maybe its strongest realization because, you know, the institutionally speaking, the universities gained much stronger during the period we normally considered the Renaissance period. So this was, institutionally speaking, the academies, the academies were a kind of an institutional alternative of learning. But the strong tradition was the continuation of the medieval tradition at the universities until the 18th century. Even the commending on Aristotle and following the usual traps and traces of dispute and comment. The break is much harder and maybe this is, since this is culturally more visual, is much stronger in the art world because here indeed we find the going back to the ancient models to late antiquity, an open break with the way how, for example, literary places were treated. The medieval cathedrals are not done on the on the plain grounds. They were always incorporating the predecessor part. So there are the built continuity, literary continuity, often with the pre-Christian period. And when we take, for example, places like Chartres and Saint-Denis, they were all built on pre-Christian grounds and they were incorporating even those sources, those starting poems, even the cathedral in Cologne. If you go to the excavations, a Roman house from the first century, a very, very, very early, very early place. Yeah, almost like medieval philosophy being built on Aristotle. Yes, yes. Or think of San Clemente, where you find an old Roman house and you find a mitros, a ritual place, and then the early Christian churches and so on. But when it comes to the renovation of Saint Peter, that is the most famous counterexample, the old basilica was turned down. It was totally erased. Nothing was left. And even Michelangelo wanted to switch the burial place of Saint Peter on aesthetic grounds because it was not due to the original plan of an ideal church. So normally, I'm not so in favor of all those epoch and split narratives, because they are, for example, with respect to philosophy, the power to exclude things. So they are the Middle Ages were invented a little bit to tell people and read Hegel, so you can forget about it. Don't read those stuff. It's boring. Yeah. Stupid sophistication of scholastic idiots. But if you're talking about the art world, we can see that something happens in the period we call the Renaissance, and that the way the approach to art and to the self understanding of art and what art represents changed pretty much in comparison with the medieval time. If I can take you back to something you were talking about earlier, which is this contrast between the idea of beauty as being represented in all of creation, and the much more specific idea of producing handmade artwork, something we would consider to be an artwork. Is there still not a connection in terms of the actual features of the artworks that were produced? Because I think a lot of people look at, for example, Saint Denis, and they see Neoplatonic metaphysics turned into stone, right? Because there's this light, there's symmetry, and is there truth to that? I think this is the wrong way to see it. It's the same, for example, there are articles, they try to connect the theories, the speculations of the school of charter to the building of the cathedral of charter. I think there is nothing you can connect to this. I think this is this Hegelian approach that you need an idea in the beginning, maybe that the very same person who is in charge of the building campaign must have this idea and that the concrete art is then the objectivation of this idea in concrete materiality and cultural contextualization. I think this is simply historically not true. Because if you do the archaeological groundwork, you see that it goes the way around. It starts from the conditions. And for example, if you consider the texts which were used in the working labs and the work surrounding the cathedral, those are not speculative texts. It's not speculative mathematics. Even now, an architect uses very concrete and practical things, applied geometry, applied arithmetics. In connection with this, if we find and I like very much the hermeneutics of Arthur Danto who asked what makes an artwork special. That is what he calls the transfiguration of the commonplace, of the daily things. Indeed, you can find this. Even the medieval people, they consider differences. They think about those configurations taking place. For example, let's take Saint Denis. We can see it in the writings of this famous Abbessouge and so far they are really telling. They tell us the ideas of a Benedictine monk, for example, attending day to day the preaching hours in the cathedral, watching them, the sunlight passing through. And even if you, I talked about this already, that for example, his writing on the consecration of the Abbessouge, so again, the name is telling, what he is doing is describing the consecration of the abbey according to the structure of the liturgy you can find in the ritual. And you see where light appears and what he tries to do. He tries to assemble. And if we know that at this time the church was not finished, it was just laid out and parts of them were finished. So he tries to give an imagination of what the church would look like if we follow the passage of the liturgy and follow him through this place, as is so to say, in performative art. And this is one example in which context we find even then also the theoretical ideas. They are much more, I call it applied theology, taking up reflections. They have to nail down, to break down, to poetry. There's a much closer connection between poetry, for example, and art, than to speculative philosophy or speculative theology. So this is our idea from the 19th, 20th century, that we need such a kind of speculative underpinning. But this is not the most proper way where you find the context for what I call the transfiguration of the commonplace in the Middle Ages. Right, well that seems to me to summarize something that's true of medieval philosophy or the medieval world in general, which is that although it doesn't always give us what we're looking for, it gives us things that are very interesting. Yeah, yeah. But this is, I think, a typical hermeneutical problem. So I'm fine with this. And then I came to meet and to cooperate with a fantastic art historian from America, Jan van der Molen, with whom I did the first research on this, even that we went to Saint-Denis and did the measurements, for the first time concrete measurements. And you see then that it's not all ideal and planned. It was, it's simply grown. It's grown, yeah, one upon the other. And then, this is like in nature, so there are then asymmetries and disrupts and problems, which we can never explain if this was done on a ground zero, ideal plan or map. But he told me, start and we will look. At the end, it was a great discovery for me, if you would then follow the object and follow the context, just, I think, those two things. But I think for me to understand that it was also theoretically a kind of an door opener or gate opener for me to look for more contemporary ideas of art. For example, let's see in the way of the object-trouve art, the art which, for example, Joseph Beuys, that you take again the point of view of this very wide concept of art, not this limited one, which is defined as fine arts by being part of a canon. But to break with those canonical interpretations, the understanding of art. This helped a lot to widen the horizon, where you have to look for, if you're looking for reflections on medieval aesthetics. You have just to go to the object and keep the classifications open. You can later try to do this. The first time is just broaden your perspective and also your understanding of what you are looking for. Stay and be surprised. This is, I think, quite a different approach than starting with a very clear concept, just looking for what you are looking for. You always find then what you're looking for. Like when you are doing an excavation, if you have a clear understanding, you will always interpret everything what you find in connection with your given, already given and fixed scheme. Right. Okay. Well, good advice to apply in the history of philosophy as well. For now, I'll thank Andreas Speer very much for coming on the podcast. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure. And please join me next time as we continue to look at medieval philosophy, hopefully keeping in mind these broad horizons here on the history of philosophy without any gaps. Thank you.