Summers of Discontent by Raymond Tallis

Author:Raymond Tallis [Tallis, Raymond; Spalding, Julian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781908524416
Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press

Chapter 7

The Experience of the Arts

If art serves no moral function, is it not trivial, empty? Why should it be fostered, sponsored, cherished, taught, encouraged, if it leaves the world morally unchanged? There are two sorts of answers to this question. They are superficially different but underneath probably boil down to the same thing. The emphasis in both cases is on inner effects that do not readily translate into outward manifestations.

The first sort of answer says, yes, the behaviour of those for whom art is important is not conspicuously better than that of individuals who do not read a novel, never mind a classic novel, from one year’s end to another, who have never been to a symphony concert and would no more think of going to an art gallery than of abseiling down a hundred-foot cliff. Indeed, the behaviour of the former may, for the reasons I have already dwelt on, be worse. Nevertheless, this lack of outward difference, it is argued, conceals a profound inner difference. Those who have been influenced by art are more reflective in their behaviour; they act consciously, whereas others act unconsciously.

Art-loving humanity, it is claimed, is more remote from unreflective animality or unconscious mechanism. Analogous claims have been made for philosophy and for religious belief – which up the cost of goodness but make it intrinsically more worth while. When art-lovers are good, they choose to be good rather than merely acting in accordance with their training. Consequently, their good actions, although externally similar to those of individuals without art, are morally of a different order – perhaps because they cost them more than they do the unthinking multitude. To put this another way: influenced by art, we may do the same things but at a higher level and with greater moral investment. The illiterate, loving, foster mother who brings up and loves thirty children does so at less personal detriment to self-development and self-fulfilment than the art-loving mother who is denied by her considerably fewer children uninterrupted access to art galleries for a few years.

This is an implausible, difficult, dangerous and arrogant doctrine which is unlikely to win much support for art. The notion that good behaviour is more admirable in lovers of the arts because it costs them more as they have a soul to look after reminds me of a view once current among middle-class Indians that the poor aren’t really poor because they haven’t a standard of living to keep up. And it is self-contradictory: it implies that the sensibilities awoken by, addressed in, or cultivated through art make it more difficult to behave decently, that they add to the price of ordinary kindness, everyday sacrifice, etc. Whereas this may reflect the difference between an individual who consciously chooses the moral ingredients in his or her life – including commitment to others – and one who merely tumbles into them (someone for whom, say, child-rearing is a deliberate sacrifice rather than a continuation of a somnambulant existence), it remains purely speculative, and a perfect basis for the special pleading of the selfish.

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