Beauty & Imitation : A Philosophical Reflection on the Arts
By Daniel McInerny.
Word on Fire Academic, 2024.
Hardcover, 448 pages, $34.95.
Reviewed by Rev. Joseph Scolaro.
In matters of taste, there can be no dispute. Or can there? This expression, as common as it may be, can seem at once both incredibly reasonable and unreasonable. It is obviously the case when it comes to food, where on one level we recognize that individuals have their likes and dislikes—we are not surprised when we hear that certain people enjoy Brussels sprouts while others do not—yet when speaking of chocolate cake or some other perfectly unobjectionable food, we can be surprised when someone expresses disgust. It is true even more so in the arts, where, for example, in music we recognize that there are countless fringe singers and bands who have their particular admirers and detractors, and yet we struggle to imagine someone denying the beauty of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. Or in the visual arts, who could deny the beauty of a Caravaggio painting or a Bernini statue? It seems like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, a matter of taste—except when it is not, when it comes to those things that we would consider inherently beautiful.
Trying to find a justification for this idea that there is some sort of universal standard of beauty seems all the more important today, as we find ourselves surrounded by more and more art that seems to have little claim to being beautiful. Perhaps we walk into a museum of modern art and find only abstract images and seeming heaps of everyday materials randomly arranged, or we walk out of a movie and wonder why Hollywood, with plenty of beautiful people and beautiful cinematography, seems increasingly unable to portray anything that is itself beautiful in a more profound sense, appealing rather only to people’s basest desires. In the face of these situations, we want to argue this is something more than a matter of taste but is rather that we are in effect producing less beautiful art.
The quest to make such an objective argument, however, can be elusive. As much as beauty is something that we can point to when we see it, in principle it becomes much harder to pin down. What makes something beautiful? Searching for a definition that crosses the many arts is not easy, and very often the attempt to do so is inherently counterproductive. There is nothing drier and more disconnected from reality than a discourse on beauty that in reality drains the beauty from the things it discusses. Rattling off a definition of beauty as that which has integrity, harmony, and clarity can often be nothing more than the giving of lifeless concepts that is a long way off from capturing what it is to experience something as beautiful.
Nevertheless, much to Daniel McInerny’s credit, in Beauty & Imitation: A Philosophical Reflection on the Arts, he avoids many of the dangers in writing on beauty, and provides a valuable philosophical tableau which provides much of the groundwork to explain that instinct for beauty we so often cannot put in words ourselves. It is clear from the beginning that the goal, rather than providing a formal academic analysis, is to shed light on the nature of beauty for even non-philosophers in an apologetic style. Working from an Aristotelian-Thomistic framework, he strives to translate technical concepts into a more easily accessible (though not facile) idiom that resonates with a lived experience of the arts.
As is evident in the title, central to his investigation is the idea of the arts as imitative, and the fact that imitation implies a great deal more than simple copying. Working from the Greek term mimesis, McInerny sketches imitation as more of a re-presentation that both captures reality in an enriched way and in turn has a more profound impact.
So when it comes to images, he shows how as much as the technique and brushstrokes can be important in bringing about beauty, the beauty is found in that painting’s ability to re-present reality in a way that opens our eyes to it on a deeper level. Whether it be a famous portrait of Winston Churchill and how it captures his essence through his worn out appearance from the burden of wartime leadership, or even a photograph of Abraham Lincoln that personifies him through its noble portrayal, the particularity of the art draws attention to a universal reality. Similarly with novels, plays, and movies, the stories are not just about the characters portrayed, but in the way they capture something of broader human experience. And as to music and poetry, the arrangement of words or melodies expresses an experiential reality that cannot be flatly written out in prose.
These “imitations” then have a profound impact, as the experience of the particular not only points to a universal reality, but also inspires individuals to reflect on that reality in their own lives. A portrait may capture someone who is broken or noble or ecstatic, and one will inevitably reflect on the kind of life that entails such results. Reading a story or watching a movie, we are able to experience situations that are dangerous or exciting or uplifting without actually having to have gone through them ourselves, and can examine how we would or should respond to such situations. So too poetry and music inspire us to examine the interior life of our passions and whether they are well ordered.
In each case, what makes the works of art beautiful is that they do not just inspire reflection, but they point us to the good that should give shape to our lives. There is an objectivity, such that the beautiful will lead us to a deeper knowledge of what it is that the good person, the happy person, the person aiming for beatitude and their perfect end as a human being, will do. Art gains its objectivity in that it does not try to define reality, but merely re-presents it in a striking way, such that the artist, in the words of Tolkien, subcreates. Art is beautiful in revealing the truth of man to himself such that he grows in knowledge of the good and the true through the encounter.
After reading McInerny’s work, then, whether we find ourselves in a museum or movie theater, it will be a bit easier to understand what it is that we experience. Why is it that a Pietá may move us while a pile of paperclips artfully arranged does not? Why is it that The Lord of the Rings inspires us in a way that Wedding Crashers does not? The nature and value of good art for an individual and for society are shown, with many varied and vivid examples, in such a way that the reader is encouraged to examine his or her own relationship with the arts and how perhaps to appreciate them more profoundly. In a culture that has lost its way, we are given hope in the power of beauty and what it can accomplish in restoring a sense of the true and the good. McInerny thus ultimately gives credence to the famous words of Dostoyevsky, “Beauty will save the world.”
Rev. Joseph Scolaro is a doctoral student in theology at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome.
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