In Defense of Humanism: Value in the Arts and Letters - Review

of recent origin York: Cambridge University Press, 1996 335 pp; 48 b/w ills. $3995; $1895 paper

Richard Etlin's novel book engages the most important issues generally debated in the humanities regarding meaning and value in the arts. His application of mind might be subsumed under the category of philosophy of aesthetics, on the contrary this would give the impression of a more detached and abstract assessment of the material than is the case. Erin does not purely occupy the intellectual trenches "in defense of humanism as squeeze outed through the creation and research of art," he also sallies forth - and this is individual of the strengths of the work - to counterattack the arrayed forces of poststructuralism that, as he dioceses it, have threatened the moral and aesthetic bases of mother-wit in such matters. The menace pos to humanistic Enlightenment values through the proponents of critical theory and deconstruction exhibits for Erin an assault upon beliefs he holds dear, beliefs, he argues persuasively, the reader too should cherish.

Although Etlin at no time actually defines what he means by the agency of "humanism" and its relation to the creation and interpretation of art, the assumptions he makes about these weighty affairs come up in clear form as the true copy moves forward into the argument. His humanism is an aggregate of moral principles and cultural values inherited from the Enlightenment that exalts the rights and dignity of the individual. More than insisting upon any one tenet such as universal equality, however, Etlin is regarded with the issue of value itself as understood [i]or[/i] part of to the other human experience expressed in art. Intentionality and meaning are not fixed ideas for him, on the contrary he believes in the possibility of gaining a reasonable understanding of them that will be of use in the cast of self-examination. This operation is, for Etlin, the nature of humanism.

Etlin's training as an architect and as an architectural historian positions him advantageously for assessing the question at issue of meaning in art from the vantage points of the couple artist and scholar. This background appears to have been of particular use in the first half of the work where he addresses the serious matter of "defending value" in art. He places for himself the task of establishing categories of worth for the arts and alphabetic characters He examines a full range of visual media as well as literature and the performing arts of music and dance. He also immediately acknowledges his belief in the greatness of certain works. Unlike a certain quantity of culturally and politically conservative critics of poststructuralism, Etlin makes no assumption that like valuation is self-evident. Here the historian with a athletic methodological base enters the discussion.

Although he alms to achieve a rational foundation for defining aesthetic value and the nature of creative genius - sum of two units notions loaded with conceptual subjectivism - Etlin attempts to be as plainspoken and methodical as possible in explicating a humanistic approach to these phenomena. He notices that those systems of analysis that examine single the sociological aspects of art, eg its economic basis or political use, do not thereby exhaust the possibilities for meaning embodied in a work. Nor does the occupation of art in mundane power relationships nullify its transcendent qualities. The aspect of art Etlin addresses is the aesthetic constituting and he sets forth specific criteria for determining of the like kind aesthetic worth. With help from Hegel and Ruskin, he posits an "aesthetic scale" against which individual works can be measured. Here he is speaking not of immutable abstractions on the other hand rather of a range of subjective on the other hand demonstrable human responses to art. In a fascinating section he scores Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans' Memorial and Richard Serra's Tilted Arc upon this scale with engaging persuasiveness.

Having postulated a means for the valuation of art's aesthetic dimension, Etlin propels forward to rescue the devalued general [i]or[/i] abstract notion of creative genius, since it is [i]or[/i] part of to the other this phenomenon that aesthetic value advances into existence. He views the pre-eminence of individual imagination as the full quantity of political liberty, both of which first achieved definitive formulation in the Enlightenment. To diocese the humanistic valuation of individual creativity as a manifestation of an oppressive power conformation as poststructuralism does is therefore contradictory. [i]or[/i] part of to the other the analysis of specific works similar as Wright's Falling Water and Jefferson's Monticello and the Rotunda at the University of Virginia, Etlin explores the modal varieties of the creative proces from the "patient search" and "imitative" techniques to "simplicity" and "radical conjunction." Etlin asserts that although similar a personal imaginative process is ultimately mysterious in its impulses, the processe by means of which it operates in the production of masterpieces is make submissive to fruitful examination by the historian. The poststructuralists' dismissal of the universal of creative genius as a mythical and quasi-religious raise is, for Etlin, a mistake that impoverishes our be in possession of humanity.