What Is Philosophy – Part 2

Last week, I introduced a series of posts exploring the question ‘what is philosophy’. It follows a recently published academic article of the same title by philosopher Kuzin Vasily^*. In case you missed it, I recommend you start with part one before continuing with this post (it will make more sense that way). Here, in part two of the series, I talk about one of the ways Kuzin suggests we have developed to deal with life’s hardships – the way of art. As a quick reminder, he thinks art can help us lessen suffering by shifting our attention from the problematic situation to something imaginatively created. Imagination is the means of the ‘way of art’. 

The Way of Art

It may seem strange that Kuzin sees the way of art as that of a mere distraction, a shifting of attention to an imagined world. After all, there is a lot of profoundly thought-provoking art, like philosophical novels, plays, or certain paintings. Some philosophers have had one foot in the art world themselves (Sartre’s plays come to mind – see, for example, the post about his fascinating play Huis Clos). Surely, Kuzin wouldn’t argue with this. So, what does he mean?

Kuzin begins by clarifying that the reason why distraction works as a way of reducing suffering is the crucial feature of our consciousness – intentionality. I would even call it a structural feature, a metaphorical building block of our consciousness. 

What is ‘intentionality’? In short, it means that our consciousness is always directed towards something. We perceive something, think about something, are aware of something, intuit something, and so on. There is a direction, a vector, towards a ‘something’.

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This idea has at least two implications. First, there is no such thing as a thought ‘in itself’ that we can locate and study in isolation as some ‘pure’, directionless unit of consciousness. Second, being directed towards something means not being directed towards another thing. Kuzin observes that “the objects of our perception and thought are not present in consciousness all at once” (2023, p. 16, my translation, emphasis added). 

We can combine several objects of consciousness simultaneously to some extent, but this capacity is limited. For example, I am aware of the cup of tea on the table next to my computer while typing this and thinking about Kuzin’s ideas, all at the same time. But I cannot simultaneously plan what to cook for dinner or analyse the meaning of critical phenomenology. In this sense, there is truth to the saying ‘where attention goes, energy flows’. If we could direct our consciousness towards everything at all times simultaneously, we would have super-human abilities, which, it is safe to say, we do not have.

How is this related to art? After all, there are plenty of ways to redirect our attention that do not involve art. For instance, I can focus entirely on cleaning up the house, which will keep me from thinking about a bad day at work. That is true, and Kuzin agrees, offering similar examples. However, in his view, art is a “specialised area of social life in which people are distracted from everyday problems and hardships” (2023, p. 17, my translation, emphasis added).

Professional Imagination

A crucial feature of art is imagination. The creation of new, imagined realities makes art an area of social life specialised in redirecting our attention from the actual world of our daily toils to the world of imagination, where we are distracted from our troubles. For Kuzin, all four ways of overcoming suffering – science, religion, art, and philosophy – are specialised areas of social life. What makes them specialised is precisely the means they use; for art, it is imagination.       

Indeed, I am sure we all have felt the moving power of artistic experience. Whether at a music concert, a theatre, an art gallery, a storytelling event, a festival, a cinema or at home in front of Netflix or with a book we cannot put down – a good artistic creation transports us somewhere far away from whatever is causing us concern in life, at least for a brief period. The problem is not solved, but we are, hopefully, changed when we get back to it. Perhaps more inspired or simply calmer. 

Yet, isn’t there more to art than professionally created distraction? Doesn’t some art draw our attention to social issues and highlight what is problematic in our very real societies? Doesn’t it sometimes contest the accepted, dominant norms and views, challenging, even shocking us into seeing them in a different light? Doesn’t art offer us a way to understand ourselves better and know ourselves through its reflection? I have read three classical dystopian novels recently (Zamyatin’s “We”, Huxley’s “Brave New World”, and Orwell’s “1984”), so I can answer a confident ‘yes’ to these questions. What does Kuzin say?

In his view, the first task of art is to captivate and draw a person into an imagined reality. Understanding (social criticism included) is not the goal of art or its necessary feature. Moreover, he proposes there are art forms where understanding is purposefully rejected, for instance – surrealism (literally, ‘beyond reality’), “a literary, philosophical, and artistic movement from the 20th century that emphasised the poetic, the revolutionary, and the irrational while exploring the mind’s inner workings” (Artchive). 

Philosophical Mode of Perception

Kuzin suggests that the degree to which understanding is required for art perception depends on the mode of perception. He proposes three such modes: 1) unconditionally-reflective, 2) conditionally-reflective, and 3) reflexive. For the first mode of art perception, understanding is unneeded; for the second – desirable; and only for the third – required. 

Unfortunately, Kuzin does not provide a more detailed explanation of these categories or examples of their application. In my view, as these are modes of perception, they are ways how we can approach art. In other words, it should not be just the work of art that dictates how we should perceive it. Instead, we can try different modes and see what fits our encounter with the respective work best.

However, some art forms will demand more reflexive work from us where we have to interpret and understand the meaning. For example, Kuzin highlights performing arts, such as acting and directing, in theatre, film, or musical performances. He sees the work of these artists as coming closest to the work of philosophers and philosophy.

“The work of these artists, being to a large extent understanding, interpreting, is essentially philosophical work.” 

_{Kuzin (2023, p. 24, my translation, emphasis added)}

But what is philosophical work? That is precisely what I will turn to next week in part three – the ‘way of philosophy’. Stay tuned!

keep exploring!

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P.S. Thank you for visiting me here on the humanfactor.blog! If you enjoyed this post and are interested in more philosophical content, I invite you to explore the blog, leave a comment, like, and subscribe to get notified of new posts.

^*Reference and link to the article (original in Russian; abstract translated to English at the end of the paper): Kuzin V. What Is Philosophy?. Idei i idealy = Ideas and Ideals, 2023, vol. 15, iss. 1, pt 1, pp. 11‐34.  

_{Featured image credit: my photo, taken inside the McEwan Hall, the University of Edinburgh, in Edinburgh, Scotland.}