Habermas and Literary Rationality by Colclasure David L.;

Author:Colclasure, David L.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Humanities
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2010-05-26T00:00:00+00:00

Wellmer notes that Adorno had also spoken of truth in art as an interference phenomenon, namely as (1) the interlocking of the mimetic moment with the rational; as well as in (2) the relation between truth, aesthetic appearance (Schein), and reconciliation.84 But because Adorno does not separate the two notions of truth discussed briefly above (objective truth and aesthetic coherence), his aesthetic theory remains an aesthetics of (objective) truth. For Adorno, art must be interpreted, its truth content must be (and can only be) presented, by the discursive practice of philosophy, that in turn cannot but raise truth claims about its object of inquiry, claims, however, which cannot capture the emphatic truth embodied in the artwork. Borrowing Koppe’s terminology, Wellmer argues that Adorno’s aesthetic theory is an “apophantic aesthetics of truth.”85 This is another way of saying, as Koppe had said, that Adorno sees truth in art as the embodiment of the emphatic form of assertory (propositional) truth.

Wellmer’s reconception of truth in art as an interference phenomenon between the three forms of validity allows the truth content of art to be described in terms of its truth-relevant “effects” or world-disclosing potential.86 Up to this point in my discussion of Wellmer, the terms “truth in art” and “aesthetic validity” have been used somewhat interchangeably, but the concepts they designate are clearly not identical in Wellmer’s account, because (propositional) truth constitutes only one of the three forms of validity, the interference of which makes up aesthetic validity. His distinction between truth and “truth-relevant effects” is intended to give some contour to this distinction. In his analysis of the relation between truth in art and aesthetic validity, Wellmer holds that there is something about art that leads us to consider artworks to be bearers of truth. There is, in other words, something like a truth claim implicitly raised (and, at least implicitly, responded to) in the reception of an artwork. But this is not, strictly speaking, a claim of truth, but rather a claim of truth-potential, he argues.

Wellmer thus argues for aesthetic validity as a form separate from other forms of validity, one which consists in the coherence of a piece of art, which is in turn an indicator of its possible truth-effects. Wellmer understands this description of aesthetic validity as “truth in art” to represent a metaphorical use of the concept of truth. Moreover, Wellmer argues against the unmetaphorical use of the notion of truth in art:

Truth potential and truth claim of art can […] both only be explained with recourse to the complex interdependence of the various dimensions of truth in the experience of one’s life history or the formation and change of attitudes, manners of perception and interpretation. Truth thus be can attributed to art only metaphorically.87

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